Storer’d Thoughts

The interwebs are unclogged. We are back, baby! And the new internal house network, thanks to Josh, is working wonderfully! It’s so nice when things start working again!

So. The big day is here. We’re finally moving into our new home. My mother-in-law has been busting her butt getting all the rooms painted and her, father-in-law and I have been working hard on our master bedroom. We had to tear down the two (two!) layers of wood-like paneling, scrape it clean, and then use joint-compound (drywall ‘mud’) and tape to cover and sand over the holes and notches and imperfections.

Amanda has already posted about moving help on her blog.

The big issue I noticed tonight is that I don’t have a phone line anywhere in that house. It seems like the previous owners snipped the lines from the jacks and took the jacks with them! I have no idea how to re-do them, either, as I have no experience in creating ends or splitting phone or ethernet cables (well, that’s not entirely true… I have done a few ethernet cables in the past). Halp! So, not only will I not know if they’ve hooked up the phones tomorrow… I won’t have internet until Monday at the earliest.

On a brighter note - I won’t care, because I’ll be too busy moving and arranging stuff to care.

Also, there was a power outlet that wasn’t hooked back in correctly, so now the main source of power for my entertainment system isn’t active. Gah! Best laid plans and all that.

I can’t wait for my friends to see the house in all it’s repainted glory. Here’s to hoping things go smooth.

I just took this Jung Typology Test and got the expected results.

---

Your Type is: INFJ

Strength of the preferences %
Introverted	Intuitive	Feeling	Judging
33%	75%	38%	56%

Qualitative analysis of your type formula

You are:

• moderately expressed introvert
• distinctively expressed intuitive personality
• moderately expressed feeling personality
• moderately expressed judging personality

---

So, I’ve seen Watchmen. It’s a little difficult to put into words how I feel about this movie. It’s so thought-provoking a story that I am overloaded by it. And I’ve read the damn graphic novel! The graphics alone were beyond awesome. I think Alan Moore was both right and wrong about not being able to film his work. He was right that they had to change certain aspects of it in order to make it work for the big screen, but wrong that once those changes were made that it wouldn’t be the best damn super-hero movie I’ve ever seen. It may be I feel that way because I know the story, and to see it come alive on [digital] film was breathtaking. I think I sat through most of that show with my mouth hanging open with surprise. I really only had two complaints about it: Sally Jupiter (the first Silk Spectre) was a horrible casting choice, and it wasn’t long enough. Yeah, I said it. It wasn’t long enough. There could have been things added to this story and pushed it over three hours long, and it still wouldn’t have been enough.

Anyway, I’m off to pack for the rest of the evening. I’ll be glad when all of this moving stuff is finally finished. My life will change, but I am of the belief that it was be a better, more fulfilling one.

First of all, since I’ll be seeing Watchmen some time this weekend, I figured I’d show this humorous video I saw on digg.com earlier today:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YDDHHrt6l4w

Second: I’ve really not felt the desire to post anything the last few weeks. Amanda’s been posting on her blog about the big move, so there really wasn’t any point in repeating it. But I do have to say that I am extremely nervous, and feel kind of lost. So that’s probably why I’ve had nothing to say.

http://golden-silver.deviantart.com/art/What-I-Learned-from-L4D-105202937

This is frickin’ funny, and so true.

This is frickin’ awesome. I know it’s a little “over-acted” but for the budget they had, this should be an example of what a real HL2 movie would look like. And it would be awesome.

Escape from City 17 - Part One

Yeah, did I mention it was awesome?

I kid you not, it’s time to party like it’s 1234567890! All the *nix geeks out there must be havin’ a party during this time: It’s required by geek-code. ^_^

http://www.1234567890day.com/

From the site:
—-
What is this all about anyway?
It’s time to party like it’s 1234567890 – ’cause it is! On this Friday, Feb 13 at exactly 3:31:30 PM (PST), Unix time (What is Unix time?) will equal ‘1234567890′.

I got a new small poster for “my wall” at work, which is just behind me since I sit at a corner table, (The “Caution” sign, courtesy of Brent) and I thought I would post a pic of what the wall behind me looks like.

I updated my Wordpress theme today to the “Modern” theme. I like it a hell of a lot more than the previous one. Looks much more professional. Plus it fits with the basics of what I need.

I’m going over to Lee & Billie’s house for game night tonight. I’m hoping Taryn and Josh can come. I’m sure they’d enjoy it. It’s too bad Amanda can’t join us. We’ll have to pick another game some day to play, and then she’ll (supposedly) happily participate.

I’m excited because I’ve begun looking forward to these game nights and hanging out with friends. Friends are something I’ve come to cherish a lot more lately.  I don’t nearly spend enough time with them; at least, that’s how I feel. I think I’ve locked myself away as a emotional hermit for a while now.  And it’s good to bring in other sets of feelings every once and a while. I seriously cannot stress enough that it is incredibly strange that people actually want to spend time with me. I’m like an emotional black-hole most of the time - I can suck the life out of any room if I’ve a mind to do so. Apparently, I’m getting good anti-hermit therapy!

Amanda had a few days off this week, which she is putting to good use. She’s doing some needed purging of the writing bug today, for which I cannot blame her. I kinda wish I could be doing the same thing, but so many other things are calling that I haven’t the time to put pen to paper. Though I have got an awesome story idea. Here’s to hoping I can hold the thought long enough that I can remember it for when I do have time.

In other news, the world of work keep spinning on as though it rotates through it’s own seasons. Deploys are in full swing at the schools, and I’m busy at work upgrading several applications. And a huge project will soon be dumped into my lap. And I am happy for it. As much as I tend to complain about this and that, it is very good to be needed. In this tough economic time, one always wants to feel needed.

Okay, so here’s the setup.

I work in a decently sized office with several other people, all of whom are computer techs of one type or another. One set of tables is arranged in a long line, with a set of power strips connecting all three machines and the various nick-nacks like printers and DVD-burners. Not to mention all sorts of network and USB connections… suffice it to say, if someone at the beginning of the row needed to turn off their machine and start moving the desk, everyone in the row would need to turn of their machines, disconnect cables, etc. And there are cable trays attached to the back of the tables, underneath, so that all cables are both hidden and threaded through small holes in the sides.

So, around 8 am, they start hearing a beep coming from around the center of these three desks. Around 8:30 am, I show up, and I hear them talking about it, but I’m not really paying attention. I see Seth at the west table looking around, Ryan behind him at another desk trying to determine the direction. Tom was at the east table, and the middle table was unoccupied.

And then I hear it. A quick, quiet “beep”, like the kind you hear when a battery in something is dying, or a connection isn’t quite right. Usually a little beep like this means that whatever device is running, it’s running out of power. But the worst part about it is that seems kind of random. We can’t seem to pin it down, other than it’s coming from the middle desk, where a bunch of stuff is connected to an extra PC.

So the hunt begins. We start unplugging PCs, one at a time. We disconnect the printer. We even disconnect the printer’s network switch (which, BTW, did not have a speaker in it… Ryan took it apart to verify).

9:30 am rolls around, and we still haven’t figured it out. Could it be a power strip is dying? Could something be slightly disconnected, and people are jostling something loose? I notice Seth is hunched down, looking at the back of a PC, and I’m kneeling right next to him, looking for something loose in a LCD monitor (which also didn’t have a speaker, but hey, at this point we’re goin’ nuts trying to figure this out).

And I notice him move something attached underneath the middle table’s cable tray.

Now before I continue, go look at this site, and then you’ll understand completely what’s been happening the last hour and a half.

See where I’m going with this yet?

Yes. That’s right. Seth suckered us all, pulling the first and best prank of the year. And now I knew about it.

Except, I wanted in on the joke. So I said nothing. And I watched as people started taking PCs apart, disconnecting printers and burners, and carrying them to other rooms to isolate the sound. We had people from another room come in to help us. They even tried testing the smoke alarm and started looking at ceiling tiles.

We even moved it again, in plain sight, just slightly under the east desk. So it still sounded like it was coming from the same area, but because people had been moving stuff, no one knew if the sound had moved because a part had moved. I even reached under to fix it so it didn’t stick out from under the edge of the cable tray (we came really close to it being discovered).

Eventually, Ryan found it. At 10 am. He was looking at power strips again and had laid down to get underneath… just far enough to see it hanging off of the end of the cable tray on Tom’s table.

I don’t think I’ve had this much fun at work in a long, long time. The laughs were rolling, the spirits were high, and hey, in the process we found a power strip that actually needed to be replaced!

Now we’re trying to figure out who to prank next.

heh heh heh…