Terrible Analogies

It finally came to pass.  The threat to lay off 10% of the workforce was hanging over our heads for weeks.  We knew it was coming, like an unwelcome house guest or an overdue tax bill, and it knotted us up inside.  Walking into work this morning I noticed a security guard standing sentry at the side door.  Another one was inside the data center.  Yet another was roaming the hallway.  This much security was far too suspicious.  It was obvious that something was about to go sideways requiring a show of force to dissuade any possible unrest from the natives.

Slinking into my cubicle and logging into the network a coworker popped his head over the beige fabric partition and said to me with a nervous warble in his voice, “Looks like today’s the day, huh?”  Damn, we were told the layoffs would begin at the end of the month.  280 people were about to lose their jobs.  No wonder there was so much security roaming about, keeping a watchful eye on the parking lot, the executive offices, and the server room.

Poor bastards.

Firing up Active Directory management tools I watched as employee after employee lost their access rights to the network, praying that my name wouldn’t be the next one to pop up with a red “x” next to it.  Two hours in and I watched as DBAs, Networking guys, VPs and managers had their rights stricken.  I listened as colleagues and coworkers tried to console the recently terminated.  I watched as people slowly boxed up their belongings, shook my hand, said their final good-byes and wished me luck.

At noon the VP of the data center pulled me aside and said to me in a whisper, “Don’t worry.  You’re job is safe.  People are still actively being let go, but I didn’t want you to worry about it.”  This was very cool of him to put my mind at ease.  I still wasn’t feeling good about the whole situation, but thankfully I was no longer collateral damage.

Ya know, the next time around I think I’ll avoid all the drama and be reincarnated as a house cat like mine.  All I’d have to do is spoon and sleep as my owner watched movies, fed me treats, and rubbed my belly.  I’ve had my fill of the rat race…

UPDATE: It’s the day after the big layoff and I’m hearing stories.  When I left work yesterday I saw a couple cops in the parking lot.  What I hear today is that there were several death threats made to some in upper management.  One person claimed that they were going to come back to work with a gun.  This morning employees were the target of a phishing attacking, and now someone has gained access to our environment and is repeatedly locking out Novell accounts either through manual means or via a poison pill.

…but on the positive side there’s free pizza for lunch!

My cat Nemesis in her nightly position hanging out with me on the couch

Remember the Radio Flyer wagon you had as a kid?  Remember sitting in this simple molded piece of sheet metal, hurtling yourself down the neighborhood’s version of Dead Man’s Hill, white knuckles clutching on to the inverted wagon arm, locked in a death grip, desperately trying to scrub off some speed before finally tipping over and scraping your hands and elbows in an agonizing fleshy, skidding stop?

Good times.  Good times.

Well, it seems that the trusty ole’ Red Wagon wasn’t good enough for Radio Flyer, who currently is busy reimaging their iconic product.  Taking a cue from the auto manufacturers Radio Flyer hopes to remake a classic.  This new version of the little red wagon is:

“Outfitted with 5-point safety harnesses, padded seats, cup holders, foot brakes and fold-out storage containers.  There’s a digital handle that tracks temperature, time, distance and speed — just in case energetic parents want to track their split times around the playground. And there’s a slot for an MP3 player, complete with speakers, for some cruising tunes.”

Outrage!  Can you imagine your kids doing exactly what you did as a kid, seeing how fast they can go before spilling out in a screaming heap at the bottom of an asphalt hill?  Only this time little Johnny is tied in tight with a racing harness, tumbling over and over with a hunk of platic strapped to his ass.  With every rotation his limbs become pinned between his plastic companion and the concrete, snapping bones as he tumbles.  The combined weight of child and toy compounding into an extended slide of harrowingly slow, piercing , painful proportions.

But hey, as long this updated wagon has the modern creature comforts of drink holders for juicy boxes, digital temperture gauges, and a stereo system then little things like multiple contusions and dislocations should be nothing more than an afterthought for the modern child on the go.

There are two simple rules I follow in life:

• Never taunt a guy with skin rolls on the back of his neck
• If you don’t use a turn signal on the highway, don’t expect me to let you in

I’m amazed at how difficult some people find it to move their finger one inch to activate a turn signal.  And I find it even more amazing that these same people get upset when others don’t bend over backwards to let them change lanes when they fail to indicate a change in direction.

A turn signal is used to safely indicate a lane change and/or to warn others that your forward momentum will be coming to a halt in the immediate future.  Turn signals help traffic run smoothly and helps people avoid accidents.  If you give me a turn signal I’ll go out of my way to let you slide into my lane.  If you don’t signal then don’t get upset because I’m acing you out of what I can only assume is the space you believe your entitled to.

Prime example of this in action was last Friday night.  I’m in the exiting lane of a freeway and was coming up on a mercedes ahead of me in the left hand lane that was traveling slower than the surrounding traffic.  No turn signal.  No nuthin’.  I pass him, and as I’m doing so he honks his horn and quickly pulls in behind me.  In my rearview I can see his silhouetted form flipping me off.

I’m no mind reader.  How could I have known that he wanted to change lanes in front of me?   I fail to understand the logic of these people.  I know we all occasionally do stupid things while zoning out during a long drive, but please understand that driving is not a spectator sport, and it’s not a game of chess.  Little things like failing to use a turn indicator provides a tiny little window to your psyche, letting us see first hand how you tend to treat others privately and professionally.  If you have so little respect for your fellow motorists, why should we respect you?

Monday: We need to change all local administrator accounts company wide.  This, of course, falls to me.  I’m not a programmer, but I know enough to get by.  Upon investigation I find that there’s a total of 1253 servers that need the local admin password changed.  I’m beginning to dread this week already.

Tuesday: Begin writing a program that will crawl the network and change the password.

Wednesday:  Testing is successful.  I think this project is in the bag…uh, my manager now wants the developer account password changed, and now I’ll need to reset the password expiration countdown to zero, and expire in 90 days.  Coding resumes. 

….and a hard drive goes south in a blade….and the sharepoint server has run out of HD space…and a VP is asking for a server to be built in VM….argh!

Thursday:  Yay for me!  I’ve managed to lock out the admin account on nearly 100 machines while testing my program.  Code in a quick fix.  …heck with this, I’m going to the gym.

Friday:  Manager says, “Oh, by the way, we’ll need to change the rmadmin account at the same time we change the administrator account, and we need this done asap.  And can you unrack the Whale rack and send the equipment to S&H?”.  Unrack the equipment and then continue coding.  I’m worn out, feeling like Wilford Brimley on Valium.

Manager then says to me, “Can you come in on Saturday?  We need the passwords changed before Monday.  This is project critical.”  I begin wishing I packed a flask on my person.

Saturday (6am): Program successfully crawls the network, making changes to the administrator, developer, and rmadmin accounts, setting the countdowns to the required dates.  For a variety of reasons, only 102 servers fail to change.  Complete these failures by hand.  As I’m about to walk out the door another blade server begins to have issues with hardware.  I take the easy way out of this and convert the server to a VM and finally walk out the door exhausted, vowing not to pick up the phone on Sunday.

What can I say…I live for this shit.

Whenever I purchase a DVD I make a backup copy for personal use (let’s hear it for fair use laws). Unfortunately I found myself unable to successfully rip Kung Fu Panda and Star Wars: The Clone Wars using Mac The Ripper (V2.6.6 – 3.0). Seems that SW: TCW was mastered with intentionally bad sectors, while KFP appeared to suffer from similar woes.

Frustrated after making several DVD coasters, I finally resorted to powering up the PC laptop and firing up the latest version of DVDFab Platinum. Ripped and burned these two DVDs with no further issues.

Let me tell ya, DVDFab is the way you want to go if you’re limited to software options for the PC. DVDFab will both rip and burn your data in one step.

In my experience, there’s a couple of things to note when using DVDFab:

• Selecting “DVD9″ in the Quality dropdown menu will require a dual-layer DVD disk. Instead, select “DVD5″
• To remove subtitles, uncheck everything in the “Subpicture” column. Why they don’t identify this as “subtitles” I couldn’t tell you.
• To save space, uncheck all unrequired selections in the “Audio” column. Every little bit saved adds more space for the movie.

That’s it. Now just sit back, pick up a good book, and wait for the burn to complete. May I suggest How To Talk Dirty And Influence People?