Surreality TV

Is just another day, really, but there's a remake of the movie by the same name opening today as well it seems.

Except, it isn't.

I keep seeing the infamous hockey mask in the ads.

The hockey mask and the undead psycho killer (run run run away) didn't show up in the first movie. The original Friday the 13th isn't about Jason. He's just the poor kid who had to die to piss his mother off enough to kill anyone and everyone in the general vicinity as gruesomely as possible.

Quit fucking with my childhood you fucking gimps.

Is just another day, really, but there's a remake of the movie by the same name opening today as well it seems.

Except, it isn't.

I keep seeing the infamous hockey mask in the ads.

The hockey mask and the undead psycho killer (run run run away) didn't show up in the first movie. The original Friday the 13th isn't about Jason. He's just the poor kid who had to die to piss his mother off enough to kill anyone and everyone in the general vicinity as gruesomely as possible.

Quit fucking with my childhood you fucking gimps.

Tomorrow evening, I get to deal with the TSA. I have no doubt that their 'random' search will once again involve me getting half naked in an airport because I refuse to fly in a fucking suit. I wish, just once, I could tell those fuckers to piss off. But no, not in America, land of the free. It'd be a short trip to a holding room, and probably cost me my clearance in the long run.

Hey, assholes, I have been more thoroughly investigated than ANY of YOU fuckers standing around the metal detector have, I have access to shit that would scare the living fuck out of you, and I am more trustworthy than any of you. Why the fuck am I the one who gets hassled by you minimum wage pricks as a matter of course? And why do we put up with this shit?

On that note, I'll be spending the next four days in the desert in the land of The Governator.

Hopefully, when they search my luggage, they won't steal my socks.

So, I have this robotic tape library that I've had a hate hate relationship with for going on four years now. It works well enough that I can't justify the cost of a replacement, but at the same time, it fucks up often enough to annoy the hell out of me (about twice a week, I have to manually pull a tape out of the drive as tape A gets hung in slot B when trying to pull out).

It Came From StorageTek!

Coming Soon!

To a datacenter near you!

Thrills, chills, excitement, adventure!

Now, these days Sun Microsystems is who I have to turn to for support on this, as they bought StorageTek a couple years back. It seems we don't have support on this bit of hardware anymore. Why is that? Well, it's because when our last support contract expired, they never sent us a renewal letter. Why would they want our money for essentially nothing, after all? I mean, in four years, I've called them once. I called them a few weeks ago now for a quote on a new support contract, as I HATE having production equipment not having coverage, especially on something as critical as back ups.

Of course, I've never heard back from them. And what do I come in to find this morning? A FAILED TAPE DRIVE! YAY! Thank you Sun, another company I could once depend on, now just another vendor I'd burn to the ground given the option.

Oh, and it's FUCKING SNOWING. A lot.

So, I have this robotic tape library that I've had a hate hate relationship with for going on four years now. It works well enough that I can't justify the cost of a replacement, but at the same time, it fucks up often enough to annoy the hell out of me (about twice a week, I have to manually pull a tape out of the drive as tape A gets hung in slot B when trying to pull out).

It Came From StorageTek!

Coming Soon!

To a datacenter near you!

Thrills, chills, excitement, adventure!

Now, these days Sun Microsystems is who I have to turn to for support on this, as they bought StorageTek a couple years back. It seems we don't have support on this bit of hardware anymore. Why is that? Well, it's because when our last support contract expired, they never sent us a renewal letter. Why would they want our money for essentially nothing, after all? I mean, in four years, I've called them once. I called them a few weeks ago now for a quote on a new support contract, as I HATE having production equipment not having coverage, especially on something as critical as back ups.

Of course, I've never heard back from them. And what do I come in to find this morning? A FAILED TAPE DRIVE! YAY! Thank you Sun, another company I could once depend on, now just another vendor I'd burn to the ground given the option.

Oh, and it's FUCKING SNOWING. A lot.

But you already KNEW that, didn't you?

I was hanging out in Bedlam (Bethlehem to those of you for whom proper enunciation is all the rage) with belle_canto and was randomly diagnosed with this:


Which Historical Lunatic Are You?
From the fecund loins of Rum and Monkey.

I always knew I had an electric personality.

EDIT: Okay, the asshole down the hall, who has a cell for the purpose of always being reachable one assumes, left it in his office, and someone hasn't gotten the fucking clue that he's either not willing to answer it or isn't carrying it, but Real Fucking Soon Now (TM) that phone is going to meet a decidedly violent end. Or maybe I'll super charge its battery such that the owner learns not to fuck with Nicola on a bad day.

It was a domestic weekend. Spent much money at the Home Despot. What started as a simple project to replace the first couple feet of dryer exhaust hose has turned into a complete replacement of all of it. The guy who came out to do our yearly service on the dryer on Friday took one look at the dryer and told me the vent was clooged before he even bothered to check it and verify. The original people who installed the dryer (we bought a new washer, dryer, and refrigerator when we bought the house, as those didn't convey and since we had been renting ever since we moved from Chesapeake to Fairfax, we didn't already have them) and the maintenance guy last year both missed the fact that the vent hose was clogged. We sort of vaguely knew something was wrong since drying a load of clothes takes about a year. I wish I had gotten this guy's name and number, just so I could show him the vent tube. It's totally filled with lint from end to end. He said that when this sort of thing happens, it's just a spot where the lint that doesn't get caught in the trap in the drum (which is normal, it's not perfect, and you should check the vent hose/tube off your dryer for proper flow annually) and builds up over a couple years and finally closes the air flow off. I don't want to know how long it takes to fill the vent tube (a 20ft. run, just so you can really appreciate how bad it is) from end to end.

Quick Edit: This is a fire hazard. The air in the drum doesn't exit through the lint screen (trapping the vast majority of lint), and instead is forced out of the seams in the drum, meaning the dryer chassis fills with dry soft flammable dust.

Quick edit again: The lint is also WET, since the dryer tries it's damndest to force moist air out through the tube. This lint is ancient, hasn't been dry in years in all likelihood, and is obviously growing mold. Thus the decision on my part to just replace the entire dryer ventilation system, wholesale. When all was said and done, I think I made 7 trips to Home Depot and Sears Hardware yesterday.

I'm not just replacing tubing, I'm rerouting it as well. This meant I had to buy a hole saw. I bought a 5" hole saw. It required a 1/2" drill. I only had a 3/8" drill, so then it was off to buy a new drill (I LIKE the new drill, much nicer than my cheezy little 3/8" which will spend the rest of it's existance as nothing more than a powered screwdriver). I'm also replacing the actual exhaust vent as well.

I didn't start this way. I started with a single section of 6'x 4" flexible aluminum hose and a 90 degree bend. The plan was just to replace the first section of hose, but after removing it, I found that I wasn't far enough out to get past the blockage. So I removed the next section. Still no joy. I have determined that the hose is full of lint. It probably took ten years (or maybe the people before the previous owners had a defective dryer, when we looked at the house prior to making the offer, we looked at the washer and dryer since we didn't know whether they would convey or not, and they were only a year or two old). I suspect the people who had the house before us had dryer issues as well, and no idea why, or they would have fixed it. These are the people who hand laid all the stonework around the flower beds in the yard, put in cabinets everywhere, put in underground hose throughout the yard (the black type that sweats when water and pressure are applied), and resurfaced the driveway. Trust me; they'd have fixed it if they knew.

I also replaced all the doorknobs on the ground floor with handles. Door knobs suck; door handles are stylish, functional, and do not suck for a variety of other reasons. Changing out all the door handles was supposed to be be the more time consuming and difficult of the things I did around the house. It of course when flawlessly after three trips to Home Depot because I bought the wrong things the first time. I don't think we need keyed locks on the basement and bathroom, just the front door and the door to the garage, I'll take these back now and get normal internal door handles. Oh look, these dead bolts are dual keyed instead of having an internal knob, and since in the the event that I want to leave the house in a hurry because maybe it's on fire or something and fucking around with keys and trying to unlock the doors is somewhere on the top of the list of shit people who want to die do, I guess I'll take yet another trip and make yet another return and yet another purchase. It looks really nice though. All the door handles and locks are now nickel finish instead of brass, and match the carpet. With the freshly painted walls and trim, the house is really coming along.

And hey, I stole an election from cerebrate:

Your Election Campaign by dshaw
Username
Hometown
Political leaning
Your running-mate	corruptedjasper
The current president	rimrunner
The current vice-president	robeli
Your election slogan	"Lets hide!"
People who love you the most	upper-middle-class
A flipfloppable subject	legalization of marijuana
The name of your presidential dog	Saddammie
Your total funding	$286,853
Your chance of success: 85%
Quiz created with MemeGen!

So yeah, it's Monday. Doesn't that just suck?

And it's a fucking freezer in my office.

It was a domestic weekend. Spent much money at the Home Despot. What started as a simple project to replace the first couple feet of dryer exhaust hose has turned into a complete replacement of all of it. The guy who came out to do our yearly service on the dryer on Friday took one look at the dryer and told me the vent was clooged before he even bothered to check it and verify. The original people who installed the dryer (we bought a new washer, dryer, and refrigerator when we bought the house, as those didn't convey and since we had been renting ever since we moved from Chesapeake to Fairfax, we didn't already have them) and the maintenance guy last year both missed the fact that the vent hose was clogged. We sort of vaguely knew something was wrong since drying a load of clothes takes about a year. I wish I had gotten this guy's name and number, just so I could show him the vent tube. It's totally filled with lint from end to end. He said that when this sort of thing happens, it's just a spot where the lint that doesn't get caught in the trap in the drum (which is normal, it's not perfect, and you should check the vent hose/tube off your dryer for proper flow annually) and builds up over a couple years and finally closes the air flow off. I don't want to know how long it takes to fill the vent tube (a 20ft. run, just so you can really appreciate how bad it is) from end to end.

Quick Edit: This is a fire hazard. The air in the drum doesn't exit through the lint screen (trapping the vast majority of lint), and instead is forced out of the seams in the drum, meaning the dryer chassis fills with dry soft flammable dust.

Quick edit again: The lint is also WET, since the dryer tries it's damndest to force moist air out through the tube. This lint is ancient, hasn't been dry in years in all likelihood, and is obviously growing mold. Thus the decision on my part to just replace the entire dryer ventilation system, wholesale. When all was said and done, I think I made 7 trips to Home Depot and Sears Hardware yesterday.

I'm not just replacing tubing, I'm rerouting it as well. This meant I had to buy a hole saw. I bought a 5" hole saw. It required a 1/2" drill. I only had a 3/8" drill, so then it was off to buy a new drill (I LIKE the new drill, much nicer than my cheezy little 3/8" which will spend the rest of it's existance as nothing more than a powered screwdriver). I'm also replacing the actual exhaust vent as well.

I didn't start this way. I started with a single section of 6'x 4" flexible aluminum hose and a 90 degree bend. The plan was just to replace the first section of hose, but after removing it, I found that I wasn't far enough out to get past the blockage. So I removed the next section. Still no joy. I have determined that the hose is full of lint. It probably took ten years (or maybe the people before the previous owners had a defective dryer, when we looked at the house prior to making the offer, we looked at the washer and dryer since we didn't know whether they would convey or not, and they were only a year or two old). I suspect the people who had the house before us had dryer issues as well, and no idea why, or they would have fixed it. These are the people who hand laid all the stonework around the flower beds in the yard, put in cabinets everywhere, put in underground hose throughout the yard (the black type that sweats when water and pressure are applied), and resurfaced the driveway. Trust me; they'd have fixed it if they knew.

I also replaced all the doorknobs on the ground floor with handles. Door knobs suck; door handles are stylish, functional, and do not suck for a variety of other reasons. Changing out all the door handles was supposed to be be the more time consuming and difficult of the things I did around the house. It of course when flawlessly after three trips to Home Depot because I bought the wrong things the first time. I don't think we need keyed locks on the basement and bathroom, just the front door and the door to the garage, I'll take these back now and get normal internal door handles. Oh look, these dead bolts are dual keyed instead of having an internal knob, and since in the the event that I want to leave the house in a hurry because maybe it's on fire or something and fucking around with keys and trying to unlock the doors is somewhere on the top of the list of shit people who want to die do, I guess I'll take yet another trip and make yet another return and yet another purchase. It looks really nice though. All the door handles and locks are now nickel finish instead of brass, and match the carpet. With the freshly painted walls and trim, the house is really coming along.

And hey, I stole an election from cerebrate:

Your Election Campaign by dshaw
Username
Hometown
Political leaning
Your running-mate	corruptedjasper
The current president	rimrunner
The current vice-president	robeli
Your election slogan	"Lets hide!"
People who love you the most	upper-middle-class
A flipfloppable subject	legalization of marijuana
The name of your presidential dog	Saddammie
Your total funding	$286,853
Your chance of success: 85%
Quiz created with MemeGen!

So yeah, it's Monday. Doesn't that just suck?

And it's a fucking freezer in my office.

Since I posted real content. I'm okay with that, but I have some, so I might as well.

On the health front, I saw the hematologist on Friday. He reran all the tests that had previously been done with a fresh sample (being a blood doc, he has the lab in his office) and it turns out that I just run on the low end of normal for hemoglobin and hematocrit. He told me not to worry about the previous two test results, they're due to the clotting that occurs while the blood is in transit between collection (my primary doc) and the lab (where they ship it off to for the tests). I still wonder why I'm down towards the low end, but being still in normal range, the docs aren't going to worry about it, and my insurance company isn't going to pay for me to find out, so I'll live with it. Any minor drop for any reason, and I really do suddenly fall into real anemia, but that's a problem for another day it seems.

I was watching "Heathers" again last night, because it's a great fucking film, and it occurred to me that you couldn't make that movie today. If you tried, Congress would try and have it banned, PTAs across the nation would hold marches against you and threaten to boycott everything you might have ever even thought about, and Michael Moore would make a documentary about why you're the devil. Fuck them all. We need more movies like that one, to point out just how absurd life really is. It dates itself badly in many ways, two of the more obvious of which are:

J. D. (Christian Slater) only gets threatened with suspension for firing blanks in a school cafeteria. In today's No Tolerance (read: We're too stupid to think, so we make blanket rules) schools, he'd have been expelled for life just for talking about it.

During the meeting of the teachers at various times during the film, half of them are smoking.

And because I like them, ( here's a cool meme for your enjoyment: )

Once again, we raided c_kretsquirrel's horde for this one.

Enjoy your Labor Day, I'm off to eat grilled burgers and dogs at a friend's place while our kids play.

But then, we're all dying from the moment we're born, so that's okay then.

krfsm gave us this handy guide to what ails us:

( I'm melting I'm melting...aaaaaahhhhhhhhh )

My Avaya sales rep. apparently doesn't want my money as he never bothered to send me a quote for the parts I requested. I realize it's not the money we threw at them for the switch and the phones almost a year ago now, but goddamnit, I still need this. I'm telling you, every fucking asshole who works for a telco is going up against the goddamned wall come The Day.