N'awlins at heart

Monday, March 29, 2010

I am not against the killing of fish...


W1 is an Intervention Addict. If it's a new one, we had better be home in time to watch it. Which is all good. Some of these people are freaks. I don't feel that hour was completely wasted.

It also often times gives me the opportunity to cook. Tonight was not as much effort though. (We cheated using a Boboli Crust). But it was definitely delicious. Pepperoni, Ham, Pineapple, and Jalapenos with extra cheese made for some delicious pizza. No doubt in my mind.

After Intervention comes a show about Hoarders. They keep a bunch of crap for a long time until their houses are full of it. They even had one where the lady bought the house next door and filled it with more crap. How "Rich Guy" is it that you buy the house next door for storage? Insane.

It made me apologize to W1 for my hoarding, but it was for good reason. I hoard plastic bags from the grocery store. I have a cabinet full of them. The thing is, I don't keep them because I expect to use them, I know I have more than I could ever use. But I always think I would rather them fill a cabinet in my kitchen, than float around the Pacific Ocean killing aquatic life. You know, fishes and octopi and such. (How's that for some Green Peace Tree Hugger crap?)

Monday, March 22, 2010

I also saw this at work.


All I can say is, really? Are you sure?


Lesson #hundredandsomething. Only interesting to geeks.

W1 said this may be interesting. I think she's just tired of me not blogging. Either way, it probably won't be an interesting post unless you're into technical crap. No, really, like totally into boring technical crap.

Don't say I didn't warn you.

Here is how a 30 minute computer job becomes an all afternoon event.

A guy at work makes the comment his test machine has an error stating his copy of Windows 7 is not genuine. He also mentions on the bottom of the system is a hand written notice stating "1280x576 Resolution. Win7 not supported".

I knew exactly the machine he was speaking of. Because it was my handwriting. Half way through the testing cycle they decided to no longer support that resolution. Why? To make my life Hell is my only guess. So, to get Win7 on those systems requires jumping through hoops, and Norton Ghost. I informed him I had another system that I could just reimage.

I set up the new system and he said "Oh, I also need a WWAN card swapped. Can you do that too?" I replied "No problem, this is one of the few units I can take completely apart. I've had a lot on practice on them. It'll probably take me about 30 minutes." (I have learned over time to use words like "probably", and "should" when telling people how long their computer work will take.)

I took the machine apart in no time. I mean like 5 minutes tops. Everything was going smooth. I pulled out the WWAN card and put that system back together. All was going well as I opened the new machine. It was a much nicer looking, newer revision. I installed the card but that's where the trouble began. There were no wires for the antenna. At that point I could have closed it and gave it to him, but he would get hardly any signal at all. It would definitely had been noticeable.

I looked on our "scrap" shelf and found a broken one with the proper wires. Success, all I would have to do is swap out the screen. 4 screws and we're good to go. So I thought. When I went to pit the new screen on it wouldn't fit. It was an older model and the brackets were cut different. Well, no problem, I can just change out the hinges.

I won't get into those issues, but I finally got them swapped. But now I notice the microphone connector is different. So I commenced to getting the metal prongs out of the plastic adapter. Then I swapped it with the right connector. But it looked like the metal prongs were touching. So I tried to remove them and reinstall them. And I pulled the wire out of the connector...

And downstairs I headed to the soldering lab. As I'm resoldering the 2nd wire the needle nose pliers squeeze too hard and the metal piece goes flying across the lab. Never to be seen again. After searching around, I found a CMOS battery. The motherboard connection fit in the same connector as the microphone. I finally cut the wires and soldered them to the ones connected to the screen. And put the system back together.

So what started as a 30 minute job ended up taking about 3 hours. In the end he had a white system with a black top. The hinge wasn't 100% so you have to give it a good push to open all of the way, and the keyboard is puffed up just a tad on the right side due to the extra wire. But the shit works, and I got to solder and tinker. All in all it made for a decent Friday afternoon. I can guarantee there are other parts of my job I don't enjoy as much.

Saturday, March 13, 2010

Another post...

for Taunt.

Friday, March 12, 2010

NSFW Friday Funk?

In response to Taunt's Friday Funk.




Thursday, March 11, 2010

Spring break.

Gorgeous day today. I had a wonderful ride in on the bike. And home actually. Sucks that we have no windows in our lab. But at least I have an office. :)

We have been tasked with a pretty large project next week. 3 separate projects actually. The reason we have to do these projects is to cover for one of the other teams. Apparently next week more than half of them will be on Spring Break. Really? Spring Break? Are we in High School?

One of the Marketing Women dropped off a system for me to re-image. She said it's no hurry because she will be on Spring Break next week. Is she going to Daytona?

I stopped by Coworker-R's office today and he showed me a meeting cancellation for next week, and the comment said "Happy Spring Break". When did this happen? When did Spring Break start mattering for people who weren't in school? Whatever, get your fist pump on. Hmm, now that I think about it my boss is taking off next week too.

So it looks like Spring Break is just around the corner. GO SENIORS 2010!!!

Thursday, March 04, 2010

Fun bags!

So I'm doing a google image search for, um ... ... ... sandwiches, yeah, sandwiches. And this came up.

Funbags


Ziploc Funbags!
Man I loves me some funbags.