And Hanne’s just sitting here reading while I type. Students!
One of the things I forgot to mention in my last post is that I managed to ratchet up my Technogeek rating another notch or two by spending money from my first paycheck. Not only did I pick up a 22″ widescreen LCD, but I replaced my 1st generation Nintendo Gameboy circa 1990 with a brand new Nintendo DS Lite and three Mario games. That means that on any given day, I’m walking around with my cell phone, 80 GB iPod, and a Nintendo DS Lite in my messenger bag. To make matters worse, today I was carrying around my MacBook, too.
Geekdom, thy name is Andrew. Or as Hanne said, “Too bad you couldn’t fit your Wii in there.” Not a bad idea, actually.
In the course of what I considered to be regular maintenance on the systems at work today, I managed to inconvenience a number of people, though in my defense it was a pretty inane thing to cause a ruckus. Problem: I notice that all the workstations aren’t properly downloading Windows updates due to the way it’s set up firm-wide. Solution: I tell all the workstations to download Windows updates directly from Microsoft knowing that the machines will properly update. Consequence: a large number of the systems haven’t been updated in so long, they all rush out to Microsoft’s Windows Update website and saturate our entire internal network and Internet connection. A couple of people complained their systems were running really slowly. Oops.
I had a talk with my manager (not a “talk,” but we were discussing other things at the time) and he let me know that as opposed to at my old workplace where the IT department had a license to do whatever was necessary to keep the firm secure, at my new gig there’s a larger emphasis on not inconveniencing the users. I won’t compromise on Windows updates and antivirus, though–and there’s always going to be a level of inconvenience to the users there. On the bright side, the antivirus software we use is much less inconvenient all the way around than it was in the old job, even if it doesn’t provide as many administrative options.
That should be fixed tomorrow, fortunately.
Work overall is going very well. I’m learning at what seems like an exponential rate, and at the risk of sounding like Skynet, I’m hoping that I don’t end up as one of those clueless network admins I always read about who somehow manage to screw over their workplace in the course of ignorance about what I’m supposed to be supporting and administering. I read about those all the time, and most times I think “Why didn’t they know <x> that they were supposed to be supporting?” Now I’m one of those poor fools, but I’m hoping that my natural computer savviness makes up for the fact that I’m still learning about setting up a DHCP server and importing the settings from a different server, etc. etc.
But I’m happy. Much happier than I was before, even if I left a lot of friends behind.
I drove over to my Dad’s house on Saturday and moved my beer into the glass carboy, and after sampling a couple of pints of my last batch of beer, I decided that some extra hops were in order so I swung by the homebrew shop before I went over there to buy some hops to dryhop the batch. All went well, but as it turned out, I had another bottle of my last batch of beer this past Monday, and waht started as being overly-malty beer ended up tasting like caramel. Definitely a nice taste, though I’m more inclined to favor a hoppier beer.
On my way out of Lake Oswego, I stopped by the grocery store and picked up some Chinese food, which turned out to be a huge mistake. I’ve had Chinese food there before, I like the food there, and it’s usually high quality, but something about it didn’t agree with me this time around and I ended up feeling sick for most of the rest of the day. I can’t in all honesty 100% blame it on the food, though, since lately my stomach has been disagreeing with a number of things I’ve been eating, but I’m sure that it contributed in some way to my downfall. I ended up telling Hanne not to come over for awhile while I…recuperated, though I did ask her later to come over and bring me some ginger ale and crackers. That was about all I could foresee eating that night.
That aversion to food with, you know…taste extended into Sunday, and when Hanne and I met my Mom and sister at Rock Bottom for an early dinner, I avoided ordering beer–just in case. I stuck with a Caesar salad, and it sat well enough in my tummy that since we had some time to kill after dinner, Hanne and I stopped by Jax and had a pint while we waited. Good Ninkasi beer, too.
Waited for what, you might ask? Spamalot! My Mom bought us all tickets to see the traveling show of the Broadway musical stage production peripherally based on Monty Python and the Holy Grail. It was bizarre. Good, but very, very bizarre in the classic Monty Python tradition. That’s about all I have to say about that, except that I’ve had “Knights of the Round Table” stuck in my head off and on since Sunday night. Not quite as good as having “Knights of Cydonia” stuck in my head, but I’m dealing. I get songs stuck in my head primarily when I’m not listening to a lot of music, so the last few days I’ve made a point to listen to my iPod for at least part of the day. My coworker was out sick today, so I listened to it for most of the day, and the “voices” in my head are blissfully quiet for the time being.
But on the other hand, they never tell me to burn things. They mostly just chant verses and choruses of songs I only partially know.