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Category: Personal

I asked my dad, who knows everything

Published by NiteMayr on June 27, 2008

On George Carlin:

Hes average, personally i like Chris Rock, Eddy Murphy and Russel Peters most. Never heard of him until he died and i even asked my dad, who knows most bigger comedians and he had never heard of him.

Feel free to link me to some of his good stuff, his 7 swearwords stuff was pretty…. average.

Nobbeh – who is level 44

I know my Dad, he knows football (the good kind), nuclear maintainence, 60s and 70s rock and pop, safety regulations, union politics and a bit about almost every other subject.  I wouldn’t go posting on the internet about how I asked my dad (who is not a bona fide authority on anything) about said subject.  I might say that I looked around some comedy blogs or science manuals or whatever, but not “I asked Dad, he says get stuffed“.

I am a Dad too.  I pretend to know everything sometimes too.  However, I like to think that I’ll admit when I’m stumped.  I don’t want my kids or neices and nephews to think they can use me as an authority on anything save what I’m an expert on, and even then I’d like to think they’d lie and use a euphamism like “I asked a professional asshole, and he says you’re part of the club” or “I know an expert in social dissasspointment, he says that if you sucked any more at being in relationships you’d be looking to on Henry the 8th memoirs for advice”

Or something like that.

Phishing for Wardrops

Published by NiteMayr on June 26, 2008

Dear Kevin Wardrop,

It may surprise you receiving this letter from me, since there was no previous correspondence between us.My name is Mr. Venu Nair, Malaysian national and personal Attorney to Late Mr. Morris Wardrop, who passed away on the 11th of November 2001 as a result of a deadly heart disease.

I am contacting you to assist me in securing the fund left behind by my late client, before it is confiscated or declared unserviceable by the bank where the funds was depositted.The total amount of funds in the account of my deceased client is US$ 9.7 Million (Nine Million, Seven Hundred Thousand United States dollars Only).

The Bank has issued me a notice to contact the next of kin/beneficiary to my late client or have the account declared unseviceable.Hence, I am contacting you to seek your consent in presenting you as the next-of-kin/beneficiary to my late client,since you have the same last name.This will enable the proceeds of this account to be paid to you as the legitimate beneficiary/next of kin.Upon conclusion of this transaction, 40% of the total sum will be yours for your honest committment and positive contributions to enhance the success of this transaction,while the remaining 60% will be mine.

All the legal documentations to back up claims as the deceased’s next-of-kin will be provided by me. All I require is your honest cooperation to enable us see this transaction through.This intended transaction will be executed under a legitimate arrangement that will protect you from any infraction of the law.

Kindly note: If this business proposition offends your moral ethics,do accept my sincere apology,but if on the other hand you deem it fit to assist me,kindly contact me via email:venu_nair@gawab.com as soon as you can for further details.

Yours faithfully,

Mr Venu Nair.

There are a couple things wrong with this email.  I am not the next of Kin for any Wardrop, save my Mother, Father, Sister and immediate family.  My DAD might be, but there are a long line of actual Wardrops that should be first.  In addition, beyond the name, my actual Family is McKay/Wardrop on my Dad’s side and Clark/Greczenko on my Mum’s Side.  I think there is some McGuiness in there.  By Strict descent I think we are Wardrops, but of the English/Royal Court line (James Wardrop is our proginator AFAIK).  However, we have zero contact with other Wardrops and are not heirs to any Wardrop anything.

Which sucks, for if I was an heir I’d get a registered letter; not an email.

Not a Deep Crow

Published by NiteMayr on June 24, 2008

Deepack-CrowPa, originally uploaded by NiteMayr.

I paid the 10 bucks to get the full SPORE creature creator. Not really for me, but so that my kid could play with it and really get to see all she can do with SPORE when it comes out.

I tried to make a Deep Crow with it (but you can’t control the color all that well) so I had to punch it up in post.

Please enjoy Deepack-Crowpa

Some Advice for IT Types

Published by NiteMayr on June 24, 2008

“IT is at the heart of business these days and there are real opportunities now to have a career in IT which will ultimately lead to a position on the board.”

If this is the case, why are so many IT jobs filled with people who have no idea what they are doing? I spoke to my share of IT reps from firms all over the Fortune 1000 and Fortune 50 that had no clue what they were doing, nor did they have any idea where they were going with their mandates.  Often they had no plan or action plan.

One example really sticks out for me; a hardware changeover plan that had no “buffer”  the IT rep wanted to replace an important firewall with another one.  He felt assured that he could just replace the current device with a new and wholly different one if the new devide was configured correctly.

This was a bad plan for two reasons:

1) There was no fallback beyond dropping the old hardware in place.

2) The router was the MAIN ingress to their websites and mail systems.  There were no external fallbacks or alternate sites for users to visit during the downtime.  If the transition went BAD (new hardware fails and old device breaks during transition) there was no fallback.

I know, you’re thinking: Kevin, what would you have done?
I would have published a new set of DNS records with a TTL of about 15 minutes.  I would publish them a week before I made the transition and made sure my DNS server was not inside the new router.  Once in place you would have 15 minutes of downtime while you performed the transiton to a new host for your website if something went wrong during the switch.  That’s fairly easy to deal with.

I like the idea of planning for downtime like that; you could even change the TTL on the DNS records back to 24 hours when you are done.

Here are some tips for outage planning

  1. Have a fallback plan for total failure:

    If it is an internet enabled service that users need access to, publish DNS records that point to a “Server is down” page on the net (for web services)  when the primary record(s) is/are down.

    Keep offsite hard copies (by hard copies I mean stored on Hard disk or Tape)

    Keep enough cash in the IT budget to buy server time on multiple hosts should short-term downtime become extended overtime.

    Any server that is important enough to serve all your needs should have a clone on hand with all the same data, backed up every 6 to 12 hours (or less) so that if your primary server(s) go down a clone can go online in seconds.

  2. Announce the outage in as many ways possible.  Email is never enough for big outages.  Warn users in cloud writing if you think they will read it.
  3. When the outage is going to take a machine out of service forever, contact any old admins and/or users and determine if they have stored anything important on the box.  You never know.
  4. Treat every outage as a potential crisis and be ready for complaints regardless of success or shortness of time.
  5. Confirm that all parts and plans are in order before the outage in underway, if at all possible create a schedule and checklist for the outage that creates a series of milestones and ETAs that can be delivered to end users and managers.

After all, you are the heart of the business when you are in IT, right?

George Carlin was Alive and now He is Dead

Published by NiteMayr on June 23, 2008

“The whole problem with this idea of obscenity and indecency, and all of these things — bad language and whatever — it’s all caused by one basic thing, and that is: religious superstition,” Carlin told the AP in a 2004 interview

In a typical wry response, Carlin said: “Thank you Mr. Twain. Have your people call my people.”

Carlin told The Associated Press this year he was “perversely kind of proud” to be “a footnote in American legal history.”

Few Comedians will have the balls and chutzpah that George Carlin carried around in his pants, his stuff was portable and palatable. At times he seethed with loathing for the trappings of society, struggling to suffocate the failings of others in prosaic language and invective. Other times you could see that he wanted so much for us to understand his world view that he was a wits end trying to use crude language (crude in the sense of imprecise for the task, not crude as in vulgar) to express his point of view.

George Carlin was a man of the monologue, streaming hours of precise and cutting commentary or just sputtering vituperation at his audience.  The only real tradgedy of Carlin’s work is that the people who stood the gain the most from it, his targets, were likely to be the selfsame people who would ignore or overlook it as brash, uncooth or un-pc.

I think we might see, over the coming days a number of groups trying to claim Mr. Carlin’s Corpse for their own, whatever stripe they may wear.  They will look at his death as an opportunity to say that he was in in their Camp, shaman of their particular tribe as it were.  I think George would have said it best, “go fuck yourself!” he was his own man and walked his own path, wearing only his own stripes and speaking only his own words.

Good-bye, you crazy hippy.  May you rot in the earth and fertilize a lawn or two.

A Nice plate of Fish and Chips

Published by NiteMayr on June 20, 2008

A Nice plate of Fish and Chips, originally uploaded by NiteMayr.

Yes! A great lunch that wasn’t from “King’s”

Went to “Walker’s Fish and Chips” for lunch, had the Halibut and Chips.

The Fish was great, tasty and flavorful. The batter wasn’t all the taste, the fish was meaty and strong, a pleasure to eat. The Chips were also great, obviously real cut potato, soaked overnight to make sure that they are not too starchy. Great!

I didn’t care for the coleslaw, but I’m not a fan of the slaw anyway.

PLUS Beer on tap (not GOOD beer, but on TAP) and other beer selections on hand.

I can’t recommend Walker’s more.

Roasted

Published by NiteMayr on June 20, 2008

Close Meat-ing, originally uploaded by NiteMayr.

This is not my roast, Jen made this fine repast. I don’t make my roast the same way she does, she’s a bit heavy on onions and lets the meat dry out a bit sometimes.

When I make a roast it’s a simple affair:

Defrost roast
Place roast in roasting vessel with a mixture of several cups of water, a few tablespoons of garlic powder, generous helpings of white and black pepper and a helping of generic steak spice.

Ensure that you drench the meat in said mixture and that said mixture is mixed into water. Turn meat “Fattiest side up” and generously coat with black and white pepper on fat.

If you are feeling adventurous, add instant coffee to the water, enough for two cups of coffee to your taste.

Start to heat the meat (covered) at 300 degrees in the center of your oven.

After about 2 hours remove from heat, increase oven temperature to 350 degrees. Replace any lost water and add 1/2 cup of vinegar.

Return vessel to oven and let cook, check meat after about 1 hour and ensure that it has not dried, add water as needed.

At the 3 and a half hour mark (since you started) add potatoes and vegetables. Cover with water and let cook. [Again, if you are into trying new things, add hot peppers and spiced vinegar]

Allow the water to boil down (until the vegetables are mostly uncovered) in vessel, meat should pull apart easily with fork.

When the meat is ready and potatoes are soft enough, pull from oven and serve.

The meat should be tender and moist, you may turn the leavings in the vessel into soup or gravy.

Old Content is Old

Published by NiteMayr on June 18, 2008

I spent a few hours yesterday converting old VOX posts into WordPress Posts.  These posts were also propagated to my LJ and all over my social map.  Sorry guys.

Some of the old posts have images that work, some do not.  I’ll update them as needed with original flickr content.

I skipped over a bunch of content in favor of leaving it on LJ.  So don’t expect reposts of anything that came from me between June 2007 and June 2008.  I also left out a number of QOTD posts from vox as they didn’t really say anything about me.

In total, I added nearly 100 new posts to this blog and tagged a them all with “vox” (afaik) so if you are new to my blog(s) or just want to stalk me a bit more effectivley, go ahead and look through my archives.

Thanks for visiting!

Oh What a Goo Siam

Published by NiteMayr on June 12, 2008

So I tried to get all slick and use a plugin to import my VOX blog into this blog.

It imported dupes totaling about 800.  Nearly 800 extra entries. It nearly killed my server.  (Sorry guys)

I really need to set up a test server for this stuff.

Sorry about the downtime folks