bryan wann :: binary fury

I’m thinking moving to the new place was a mistake. I picked up my keys today and took a look at the apartment. Several annoying things, quite frankly AMLI has spoiled me. This new place just isn’t nowhere as nice as where I am now.

• I could’ve sworn I asked for first floor, but they gave me a second floor
• The painting is sloppy around the trim, looks like it’s several coats thick
• The front door looks like it’s been whacked around, all scratched up
• Lack of cat5 in the walls, making it harder to run internets
• Lack of cable demarc inside, which means my cable modem and fuh will have to go in the bedroom
• There appears to be only three parking spots in front of the building, the rest are all for garages. Parking is going to be a pain
• Closets are way smaller, going to have to give up my Christmas tree to make room
• Lack of shelving, going to need to visit Home Depot to solve
• I already know they don’t answer their phones
• Layout of bedroom is going to make it interesting to fit in a desk

Several of these problems I should’ve paid more attention to when I moved in. I’m already considering handing in my notice to vacate a year early.

This morning started off so well, I was up at 8 to get an oil change and arrange return of the van. Ran a few errands, replaced the fuel filter in my truck. One of these days I’ll figure out how to replace it without spraying gasoline over everything. The afternoon started going downhill after seeing the apartment. Then I got assigned for jury duty for 9/17 – 9/24.

I’m still having an idle and AC problem with the truck. This morning it stalled out a few times while it was idiling and in gear. Replacing the fuel filter and PCV valve helped some. It doesn’t outright stall now, but comes close. I guess next is to check for vacuum leaks or something. I also discovered there’s an Advance Auto Parts store a mile away in Oak Hill, after I made several trips this week to stores all over town getting stuff for the pump replacement.

dammit hell, argh.

Hoooray, five days off! I don’t think I’ve been off this long with the new job yet.

I want to cock-punch whoever thought it was a great idea to use CamelCase in wikis, and wiki authors who still support it. How are you supposed to have an easy-to-read, attractive document when you have things like ThisIsAPage, TeamNotesOnPresentations scattered about?

That is all.

Incidentally I did some shopping this weekend and took advantage of it being a tax-free weekend for clothing. I upgraded from a pair of basic black roper Justin boots I’ve been wearing for the past month (after I had just broken them in) to Lucchese full quill ostrich boots. The comfort is an order of magnitude different. My Justins were just tolerable, some degree of uncomfort, probably had much more breaking in to do. The Lucchese felt better instantly, they remind me much of my Magnanni dress shoes; snug, but foot fully envelop in smooth soft leather. They have a rubber sole, so no more authoritative clicking on concrete, but I’ll gladly take comfort over that.

I had three girls at Cavenders come up and tell me how nice they where as I was buying them, which is a good sign. One tells me they’ll last me fifteen years, another tells me I could romp around in the stable all day and they’ll look good as new with conditioner. I don’t want to think about what I’ll be wearing when I turn 44, it’s too much to handle. I also lack a stable. I guess the oil patch or the rough world of IT will have to do.

Also cashed in a gift certificate at Men’s Wearhouse and picked up some new shirts to replace my older ones that just didn’t fit right. Went hunting around the mall for somebody that sold Brooks Brothers, no luck. Apparently my closest stores are outlet malls in San Marcos and Round Rock.

Between sleeping, watching olympics, more sleeping, waxing my truck, and more sleeping, I got bored and started taking practice Cisco certification tests. The CCNP switching test was a tricky one, endless configuration examples with some arguments switched around, pick the correct syntax. CCIE test was pretty out there, things like “how long does it take SONET to heal after a ring failure” or somesuch. That one I did happen to know, as I’ve seen plenty of maintenance announcements saying “you may see a hit of 50 ms blah blah”. The CCNA test was even farther out there. It was very wordy and executive-summary-ish, “a network is for?” “a) providing a way for employees of a company to exchange data, information, and collaboration.” I quickly tired of wrapping my head around the language and went back to watching the Jamacians dominate the 100 meter races.

Given my day job of fiddling with firewalls and VPNs, their security track might be fun. Since I allegedly can’t take any professional-level tests without my CCNA, I signed up to take the ICND2 test tomorrow at lunch to renew my CCNA. I have no idea what’s on it. I figure if I could pass it once eight years ago, I can pass it again. It’ll be really embarrassing if I didn’t pass and might have to quit my job out of shame. I’m entertaining the idea of taking the CCIE written for the hell of it, just to see where I get. That’ll be a few months off, I’m impatient so I’m taking this tomorrow.

A short visit to the Apple store tonight and now I have a new iPhone with a working speaker. An iPhone with sound! It’s a whole new experience all over again!

Ferrari 456, my truck

While at The Domain, I parked next to a Ferrari. Later, Alex tells me this was a 456, of which there were 3,289 were built, so I was somewhat lucky to see this.

Alex also posted this link today: Judge: Man can’t be forced to divulge encryption passphrase. This is very exciting to me to read. I am a strong supporter of information confidentiality and privacy, and greatly prefer to control what information about me is released. I’ve been pretty loathesome that TSA or border agents could confiscate my laptop for any reason. This makes me want to turn on disk encryption with a quickness.

The really interesting twist is that custom agents first accessed this guy’s laptop without a password, saw his kiddie porn. Then, they shut the laptop down. Later, they needed his password to decrypt the files. The judge ruled he couldn’t be forced to provide it, even after agents had already witnessed the material on his computer.

My apartment management called me up today to bitch that some of my garbage (some stray milkjugs) had been found on the lawn downstairs. I don’t know where they came from, I don’t even drink milk. Out of a fit of apathy and ‘not my problem’ I didn’t ever pick them up. I suspect they belonged to my cute blonde neighbor (or a clever asshole who likes to frame others) who also has had a vacuum sitting out in the breezeway for several days. Cute or not, I’ll throw her under the bus if I have to when they come for me!

Tangentally, apparently corporate titles have their own slang. ‘C-level’ refers to ‘Chief *’, i.e. CEO, CTO, CIO, CSO. I invented a new slang for Alex, ‘D-level’, for directors such as Director of R & D.

Friday began six hours ago, hooooray!