Archive for September, 2004
9/2/2004
Wow, my 100th post. Who’da thunk it.
I did not go to werk today because of a stomach bug. I think the worst of it is over and I can go back tomorrow to finish up the week. Kinda sucks I’ll be losing a day’s pay because of it.. but what ya gonna do. When you’re sick you have to take care of yourself.
I have been working on my CZ server and it’s running the way I want it to now. For those into the tech-side of the whole CZ thing, I had a problem with amxmod admin access on the server. Seems that after the map changed a few times around with the bots running, I would lose amxmodmenu entirely. However, I found a fix for it - and now I have amxmodmenu all the time. Good deal. As far as my playing habits are concerned, I only play CZ on my server, I don’t venture out to other servers anymore. Too much drama. Besides which, I never started having fun with CS/CZ anyway until I had my own setup. :-)
I’m also starting to pick up the habit of talking with old friends again. Feels good. At werk I’m also getting new friends there also — this is a good thing because where I werk, this is my “ilk” so to speak. Nothing but tech-heads, musicians and regular office-type people.
Some tidbits on blue-collar vs. white-collar (this should be a completely separate post, but whatever):
I am a white-collar person and have been since 1996 (officially). This means I work in the office. I do this every day. Ever since I’ve been in the office, I always notice the dirty looks given by the blue-collar people. It’s unavoidable and inevitable no matter where you werk. Contrary to what anyone would think, there is a large social difference between the blue and the white.
Fortunately for me I do have some credibility as a blue before I went to white, here’s a few blue jobs I’ve had:
I’ve had summer jobs doing landscaping for cemeteries - not easy. Cemeteries are large and you can’t just get on a ride-mower and cut all the grass like that. You have to go around each tombstone with a gas-powered trimmer and do each one manually, avoiding flower beds, small flags (for the buried military) and other things. It literally takes about 2 days to do a whole cemetery correctly. The hot summer sun does not make it any easier. If you don’t think it’s hard werk, try holding a gas trimmer all day. Your shoulder will be ready to fall off before the day is through. There isn’t a soul alive who can wear something like that and not feel it at the end of the day.
I’ve also worked for UPS as a “driver helper”, during the Christmas season (heaviest volume of the year). Anyone who would say “yeah, that’s easy”, try it. Imagine a delivery truck piled TO THE ROOF with packages with no set order whatsoever, of all sizes, shapes and weights. When you stop to make a delivery, you have to literally climb/swim through packages to find their package, sometimes 30 pounds or more. Then you have to usually climb up two (sometimes three) flights of stairs to get to the person. Half the time they aren’t there, so you have to swing around before the end of the day and do it all over again. You also have to avoid angry dogs, pissy people who don’t want to come to the door and lots of other “interesting” things about the job. Very demanding, and 100% physical - all blue. There are a few friends that have told me “that ain’t nothin’” - sure, sure.. keep talkin’. You wouldn’t last a day.
Now on to the white:
The largest difference between blue and white is mental stress. White has 10 times more mental stress than blue ever could. How do I know? I’ll compare the UPS job above to my current job at the help desk:
UPS Driver Helper: Help driver deliver packages. Lift boxes and bring to the customer. Deal with pissy customers and dogs. That’s it, there’s nothing else to that job.
Help Desk Rep: Perform 100% phone support for a 10,000+ employee based company. Have intricate knowledge of Microsoft Windows backwards and forwards. Also know popular apps like Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Access and so on. Have working knowledge of how a mainframe works. Know how to use a Meridian phone system, including how to transfer, conference, pick up, delegate, forward and so on. Must be able to type at least 50wpm (I do 75wpm). Must know how to use a Remedy Call Ticket System. Must know how to escalate procedures effectively. Must have a good customer service ethic and deal with every type of customer from plant worker to CEO. Have excellent documentation and phone skills. Must be able to troubleshoot LAN, Windows, Remote Access connections, some WAN, and….. (here’s the kicker,) be able to resolve all your calls in 7 minutes or less, in rapid repetition - all day long.
There’s actually about 20 more things I could put above, but you can immediately see the difference compared to the blue. Blue is all about simple directions for simple tasks that require physical action in order to perform them. White is all about complex directions for mutiple tasks that require mental ability in order to perform them.
I personally don’t have any friends that can do my job, nor would they want to. Where I work, the turnover rate is so high that when someone actually stays for more than 6 months, they’re considered a “veteran”. I have seen people come in, work for a week - then quit. And I don’t mean going to the boss and saying “I quit”. It’s “I’m outa here.” They just leave and never come back (cowards!!)
If you should ever pose the question “Why do white-collars make so much more than blue-collars?”, just examine the stress level - you tell me if you
could do it.
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9/3/2004
I have a new web site for my CZ (Condition Zero) stuff, it’s at www.b3L.net. That is all, carry on. ;-)
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9/5/2004
I’ve been encountering a few comments from people I know, stating things to the effect of “All you seem to do is complain about stuff on your blog, all the time.” Yes, I do that quite often. Someone once best summed up this blog by saying to me “Well, it’s a bitch board..” Couldn’t have called by a better name myself even if I tried.
I guess can be classified as one of those people who isn’t happy unless he is complaining about something (most of the time). Yeah, I bitch. A lot. So what. I do it well . This blog is my therapy for what would otherwise go unsaid. Maybe there are a few things that should go unsaid.. but whatever. My site, my blog.
With that being said, here’s my rant for today:
One of my absolute ultimate favorite things to see at the end of the dog days of summer is a school bus driving down the road. Why is that? It’s because it means the kids are goin’ back to school. Hallelujah. They won’t be playing in the street (a normal occurrence in my neighborhood - with no parental supervision usually) and they won’t be bothering me on my way to and from werk every day - speeding past me in their cheap-ass 4-cylinder japanese rice burning cars, with the ever popular stupid fat ass wing on the back.
Kids under driving age are usually just playing around in the street all day near where I live during the course of the summer. Now I know - there is no law against kids playing in the street. This is true. However, I personally don’t like it when they yell out “fuck you” just for a reaction. I also don’t like it that they wait until the very last second to move to let you pass by. Kids have absolutely no idea (nor do they care) that when it comes to kid vs. car, the car wins. To those who would ask “Where would you put them if not in the street?” Good question, here’s a good answer: they all have front and backyards. Where I live is a wooded area.
Big Babies (which is what I call “young adults”) of driving age are usually speeding all over town. They usually drive the cliche Civic or a Neon. Girl drivers are worse than the boy drivers are, usually spotted with cell phone on shoulder, stereo blasting, changing lanes with no turn signals and cutting off people left and right. And of course you’ll always see those 15-dollar “turtle” shades on. Periodically, teens will park in the handicapped spots because oh my God I have to walk 15 yards to the store and they will either have stickers all over the back of the rear window (boys) or stuffed animals in the rear window blocking the rear view by about 35% (girls).
Either way: God Bless School Buses. It means that I will now have peace on the road once again.
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9/6/2004
If any of you out there have been using Windows a while, you’re probably aware that Service Pack 2 for Windows XP is out. I have two computers here at home. One is what I call my “widget” server (just for files and stuff,) the other is my main computer I use all the time.
Small note: I highly recommend that if you use your computer at least once a day, you should have a secondary computer. It doesn’t matter if it’s a piece of crap. Having that second box is good for backing up stuff, storing things and so on. With a router (available at your local Radididididio Shack,) Windows is easy to network so you can share files to/from your boxes.
Anyway,
First I’ll talk about the install process.
The Service Pack 2 update seems to be easy. You install and reboot. I figured I would try this on the widget box first. Blew it up. Completely. Blue-screened everything on next boot. Had to reinstall the whole thing. I was pissed.
On my main box, I held off loading SP2 until I was sure I could do it safely without blowing up the box. I cleaned it up and bit and ran the install, installed fine. My widget box most likely blew up because I was attempting to do it remotely (yeah I know, dumb idea..)
Next I’ll talk about what I immediately notice about SP2:
Service Pack 2 is supposed to address the (ever prevalent) security issues among other things with Windows XP, particularly with networking and the Internet Explorer web browser. One word can describe this whole update thing: “Nannification”. This is word I saw used in Motor Trend magazine a few times, and it very accurately describes what this update does: It’s “nanny’s” your browsing and network habits. For people like me, this is very, VERY annoying - because the first thing you want to do is TURN IT OFF - which isn’t easy to do.
I’ll explain:
1. Pop-up blocker now in Internet Explorer.
One would think this is a good thing, right? Not really. The pop-up blocker does a lot more than just block pop-up’s, in a bad way. It makes some sites cease to work entirely - like citicards.com (credit card provider). When you attempt to use their Virtual Account Numbers feature, it simply doesn’t work at all because that system requires the use of one safe pop-up.
Because of my distaste for the pop-up blocker in IE, I went back to my old blocker, Google Toolbar. Works great. Always has. It blocks about 95% of what I don’t want to see, and allows me to see everything I want to see.
2. Software-based firewall put in Windows for stupid people.
Anyone who uses fast internet should have a router. It acts as a great firewall, truly. However, most people are outright stupid and just run their computer “wide open” to the ‘net, hooked up to a cablemodem with absolutely no protection whatsoever. Windows Firewall is a software-based solution to this. My opinion? It sucks. It constantly pops up warnings everywhere like “Are you sure you want to view this site?” or “Are you sure you want to download this file?” Yeah, stupid Windows. If I didn’t want to I wouldn’t have clicked it in the first place.
If that isn’t annoying enough - it’s not easy to find out WHERE to shut it off. Nowhere in the new SP2 install does it mention “Oh by the way, you have a new icon in your Control Panel called Windows Firewall.” I had to find this out myself.
A software-based firewall is a dumb idea because someone eventually will find a way to break through it. This is exactly what happened when the Blaster Worm virus hit. Everyone who had software-based firewalls got hit, and hit hard. I had two friends that both got nailed so bad that they had to reinstall Windows. One of them had to do it twice. Those of us with hardware-based firewalls (like a router) never got hit, at least I didn’t. I think that’s proof enough that a software-based firewall just doesn’t cut the mustard.
3. Auto-updating rammed down your throat
A part of SP2 that is a bit of an annoyance is the constant reminder to turn auto-updating ON. I don’t like it ON. I have it set to OFF, because I will update my computer when I feel like it, not when Windows tells me to.
4. Another stupid icon in the taskbar
There’s either a red or green “shield” icon in the taskbar for “Microsoft Security Alerts”. I hate having icons down there. I have only 3. One for my messenger, one for my Sound Volume control and one for Steam. I don’t need any more. And no you can’t just right click and get rid of it. Hell no, that would be too easy! You have to disable your Windows Firewall, a few other things, and then it goes away — AFTER A REBOOT.
—
The only positive thing about my SP2 install is that it didn’t blow up my computer, thank God. Every time of of these Service Packs comes out, I just cross my fingers and pray that my computer starts up again properly.
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9/7/2004
For some strange unknown reason, my CZ server decided to blow up really bad. I had to send off a workorder to Recon Gamer to get that fixed, so that will be fixed and then things will go back to normal.
It’s nice to know today is Tuesday already, meaning Friday will come quickly. Nice. Short work weeks are good. Were it up to me, everyone would have 3-day weekends. I honestly believe 2-day weekends are too short. It’s amazing that anyone can get anything done over the course of a weekend, because there’s so much to do (usually).
Been getting blasted with werk at werk today, but it’s expected. The first day (or second day in this case) is always loaded with stuff ordinarily, but I’m surviving. Will look forward to getting home today for sure.
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9/7/2004
I scan my web logs from time to time, and noticed that this blog has now had a significant jump in web traffic since September started. Many of this new traffic comes from Connecticut residents. I mean yeah, there’s California people who routinely read this also, but the Connecticut traffic is what I notice most. It’s neat when the locals read my random muse.
This local traffic is interesting because there are some people out there who are visiting this site that simply don’t like me. Some really don’t like me, but that’s ok because you can’t please everyone. I personally find it rather amusing that people who have openly admitted their disgust for me read this blog almost daily. That’s fine because it gives this site free web traffic and better search engine rankings every single time they visit. Yay for me (grin).
It makes me wonder, what is the attraction to read this site if one doesn’t care for me? Is it curiosity, like a train wreck where you don’t want to look but you have to? Is it some insatiable desire to peek inside my head? Well whatever it is, I guess I’ll never know. That’s ok. I don’t write my muse here for anyone but myself.
At the start this site, this site maybe got a few unique “hits” a day. In its fifth month, this site now gets 50 unique hits (on average) per day, from all over the country, such as Pennsylvania, Ohio, Connecticut (duh), California, Massachusetts and many others.
To those who don’t know, 50 uniques a day to a blog-site is actually quite good. [edit due to bad math] This is a combined total of around 200 hits a day.
I never knew so many people liked to read what I write. Guess that gives me a reason to continue to do it. :-)
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9/8/2004
The CZ server is going away. I took down the b3L.net domain today and cancelled the service with Recon Gamer. The account will officially “expire” on September 22 2004.
This decision is financial based, I save $50 a month by not having the server any longer. Ah well, it was fun while it lasted - but it’s even more fun to keep 50 bucks more each month. (grin) Right now I need all the cash I can get to pay off my remaining bills. I just paid off the car which took a big chunk out of my savings, so any little bit more each month will help out.
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9/8/2004
Recently I’ve been considering going for DCSE, which is short for “Dell Certified Systems Engineer/Expert”. This would enhance my career and put me back on the hardware side of computers rather than the software side. I’ve always preferred the hardware anyway because it’s cool to build computers. Software troubleshooting just gets on your nerves after a while, but building things is the cool stuff. (grin) At least to me it is.
DCSE certification is actually not that expensive. It requires a lot of studying to pass the exam, but since I’ve already technically done Dell cert stuff before (I worked for Unisys before, a large 3rd-party outfit Dell uses often for dispatching technicians,) I don’t believe I’ll have too much of an issue with it.
In addition, the certification would make me much more “in demand” as someone to hire, because A+ certification simply isn’t enough. As anyone knows (and if you don’t, you should,) A+ Certification means two things: Jack and shit, and Jack left town. I’m A+ certified - and fortunately I didn’t have to pay for it; the company I was working for at the time fronted the costs for the courses. But anyway, whoopee. A+ cert never helped me get a job. It’s always my experience that gets me jobs.
I was expecting to see costs in the thousands for Dell Certifications concerning DSCE certs. It’s not thousands at all actually, it’s hundreds. Yes, there are multi-thousand dollar courses for server certification (that takes a lot more training,) but the standard DSCE is a once-a-year thing that doesn’t bang the wallet too hard, and I just may go for it. Heck, all it can do is help me and maybe get a better job, or even go back to running my own biz again - and that would be really cool.
For those who notice grammar, this is my first post where I actually used a semi-colon and used it properly. Hehe. I’m still not the master of grammaticals, but I’m learning.
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9/9/2004
A guy at werk has a 384k up/down pipe DSL to his house, and said he has a PIII box that I could put a CS (or CZ) server on. Hmm….
It may be possible that I could run one of these servers for free if the computer (and the connection) can handle it. It’s a possibility, we’re gonna give it a shot. Woohoo :-)
Last nite I downloaded HLDS (Half-Life Dedicated Server) and toyed around with it a bit. I found it easy to run since I’ve been doing the rental-server thing for a while now. I believe it’s easy enough where I could just burn a disc of the setup I want (after configuring it,) and then sending it to the guy who’s going to volunteer the box and connection.
Anyway, like I sez we’re gonna give it a try. I hope a PIII is enough. :-)
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9/10/2004
Change of plans: The box to have the HLDS/CZ server installed on will be a P4 instead of a PIII. It’s got more RAM and it’s faster so I should be able to run somewhere between a 12 to 16 slot server on this box.
The 384k up/down DSL is located just a few towns over from where I live so I will be able to get SUPER awesome server response since it’s so close. In addition, the guy volunteering the box is less than a mile away from the nearest DSL switch which is even better (to those who don’t know, the closer you are to a switch, the better your DSL connectivity is).
I should have the CZ server up tonight if all goes well. I will be posting the server IP if it should get finished on time. (grin)
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