OMG!!

Sometimes I have ok days at work and other days I get to do REALLY AWESOME STUFFS!!  Today so far I've added virtual servers to a virtual virtual environment on its own virtual network so nothing talks to anything outside of the virtual environment bubble.  This is inside our usual virtual environment, which makes it akin to when I used to remote into a machine that remoted into another that then remoted into another so I could remote into anything I needed at work.  Convoluted as all getup but omg it makes life so much easier.

This is for development... and egads, is this cool.  Used to be you had to have the hardware to do this and downtimes and all sorts of crud.  Now you just sit on your butt all day clicking in UI's and saying, "You.  Over there.  You.  Over there.  You do this.  You do that.  Okay, now, I eat lunch while you do that and I watch gleefully and choke on my rice because I'm laughing so hard internally with insane joy.  Now you do that.  I need a Dew.  Whoa, it's all set up.  Can I ping this?  No, good.  This?  Yes, good.  Wow, lookey there... it's all there and it's not hurting anything outside of itself.  Hah!"  I can't even begin to explain this sort of thing to a lay person right now.  My own head is swimming in excitement.

W00T!!  I AM THE GRAND MASTER OF ALL -- oh, hi, Grand Master of Technology... :: sheepish look ::  Yeah, I know, I know.  I know NOTHING...

(but man does this stuff make one feel powerful for a little while.  It's so freakin' cool.)

~w

Computer Manufacturers

And now let me rant for a while about computer manufacturers that don't care to provide the option to order a Windows disc while ordering their computers from them.

Lenovo.  Is.  On.  My.  Shit.  List.

IBM used to have awesome products, and this laptop isn't that bad, actually.  Seems like a laptop.  Looks like one, acts like one, has a battery, it can plug in and charge up, gets online, does things laptops do.  But man, swap the hard drive with a new one and you're installing Ubuntu whether you wanted Windows 8.1 or not.  Maybe MicroSoft is behind this, I don't know, but not providing a means to recovery your os to a new hard drive?  Bad juju.

I would be willing to accept this seemingly new practice if they only made it clear that it's the case while ordering their stuff, but they don't.  You know, like Dell does!  "Include recovery media" options would do the trick nicely.  Then at least you're not blindsided by assumption.  "They didn't ask if I wanted recovery media.  They must include the discs.  Nice!  Glad I chose Lenovo this time!"  "Wait, there's no disc in this box.  Maybe they forgot it.  Oh, what's this?  You have to order it from premium support?  For a fee?  And wait days to get that, too?  WTF?!"

Screw their one-touch recovery crap.  Anybody in their right technical mind knows these days that hard drives fail.  The laptop came with a regular, failable hard drive.  Hello?  You seriously trust this?  One-year warranties don't fix hard drives that fail in two years, or five years.  Why don't they just rent out computers if they don't want us to own them anymore?

:: mumbling incoherently ::

I hate today's tech world.  I really do.  It moves fast but without any real goal other than to simply race.  No consideration for anything other than a buck or to be first at something.  No thought for quality or comprehensiveness.

Anywho, rant over.  Premium Support should be open now, so I've got a call to make.  :: steps off slippery soap box ::

~w

Ubuntu works great on this laptop by the way

Guinea Pigs are Conversion Factories

I have finally reached a conclusion to what guinea pigs are.

They are conversion factories.

This is how it works:

- Put large bowlful of grain and leafy greens into cage to silence the alarm.

- Wait a half hour for bowl of goods to be converted.

- Observe the mounds of poo and soaked papers in cage, sprinkled liberally with shed hair.

And yes, there is an alarm.  It seems to be there to let you know when there's nothing to convert.  I wish they had made the alarm quieter than a smoke alarm, but, at least I never forget to feed the conversion factory more stuff to convert.  Given I don't use the resulting product for anything, though, I'm really not sure why I got this thing.

I'm trying to figure out what these factories are actually for, though.  Perhaps I should put my guinea pig out on a field full of noxious weeds.  He would simply work his way through them, converting into usable farmland, right?  Is that what he's here for?  I seriously don't know what else to do with this thing.  He doesn't really seem to care about me as a fellow creature, he just wants to convert stuff.  Paper?  Manure.  Water?  Manure.  Greens?  Manure.  Grains?  Manure.  Air?  Manure.  Attention?  Manure.  I swear he puts out more than he puts in - and he puts in a lot.  I can't eat that much salad in a half-hour, let alone with a big handful of grain mixed in.  I'm certainly not eating a half a carrot with it, either, in the time allotted.  And somehow, the alarm still has energy to go off.  It's wicked sensitive, too.  It goes off if our fridge door opens.  It goes off when a neighbour's fridge door opens.  I suspect that it goes off when any fridge in the entire town opens.  There HAS to be an off button for that pesky alarm, or a time setting, or something.  He'd eat the entire back yard of its grass, shrubs, and trees if he had his way, in one or two days.  It would be a big pile of guinea pig manure, squishy, wet, and smelling suspiciously of farmland that is soon to be farmland.  Until he finds it again, that is, and re-converts it back to piles of gp manure.

I am certain that he converts sunlight and air into the mounds of hair-sprinkled poo, as well.  He's like the animal version of an air plant.  Mist him a few times a day and he'll live forever.

Gah!  At least he's a shiny little conversion factory.  How he keeps himself so well-maintained is beyond me.  I think he must only poo and pee when he thinks I'm about to look in there.  I mean, I just changed his papers and washed out his cage and within a half-hour of feeding him, MANURE EVERYWHERE.  Are guinea pigs nomadic or something?  They must be.  It doesn't matter how large the cage is.  He.  Will.  Fill.  It.  Every inch.  Even his food dish.  He doesn't get a food dish anymore, just a clean paper.  It'll be soiled in seconds.  Literally, seconds.  He must have manure to sit on or he's not happy.

GAH!!  I say, GAH!!!

Spring is here (sort of)

Spring is my favourite season.  It's beautiful, and as a fellow blogger mentioned recently, it's a nice allegory to God's Promise working in our lives despite all outward appearances at times.  But despite my growing dislike of the Winter cold, I think Winter is beautiful in a different way.  The sun hitting golden stalks of yesteryear, against the blinding white moguls in the fields, with a backdrop of browns and grays littering otherwise white mountains - this is also beauty to me.  Even seeing the litterlike brown chunks of previously turned, plowed, and harvested fields of manured farmland, dotting the snow like moonrocks, is a really neat sight that is lost once the green of Spring emerges and the white fades into the trickling streams of nourishment.

Indeed, Spring is a wonderful allegory of God's Promise, but all seasons are showcases of His work in our lives.  Of course, it's easier to appreciate when you're peering out from the elemental protection of a home or car!

Winnimere Cheese

I am blessed to know a great number of awesome people.  One such person, whom I feel particularly close to, loves to find and try new things and then share them.  She has often gone out of her way to find strange or unique things and share them with Dale and I.

Her latest find was something called Winnimere cheese.  She really hyped this one up... it is hard to find, a wee bit expensive, was eaten at the White House, and has won awards.  It is modeled after a similar cheese in Switzerland:  It is a soft, two month aged cheese from Ayshire cows.  This is wrapped in some moldable part of the spruce tree, imbuing the creamy round with a fresh spruce scent as it ages.  These are all traits common to the Forsterkase.  However, it is then doused with a particular beer to set it apart from its Swiss cousin.  Sounded intriguing, although I did worry about the spruce part... I've had spruce gum.  Not my favourite thing.  But, I couldn't wait to try it anyway.  Surely it must be awesome if it has won awards, right?

Please keep in mind that anything I say about my experience with this cheese is said as lovingly as possible.  The first whiff almost knocked me over backwards.  But, I was warned it was pretty pungent, so I didn't let that phase me.  I tentatively took a few more whiffs and, beginning to feel weary, finally just dove in for fear I'd lose my nerve.  It was surprisingly good... cold, creamy, silky.  I ate several more bites and began to feel all tingly.  Then I paused to talk to Dale about it and the scent rose up into my sinuses.  For a moment I saw stars and the room began to dance sideways.  I quickly ate more and the pleasant creaminess returned.  I began to feel nauseous.  I had to stop.  The cream was rapidly replaced by its... aroma.  I did not get smoke, meat, mustard or fruit, but rather, a dizzying bouquet of toe jam wrapped in the delicate balm of a spruce forest and doused with the fragrant perfume of death.  Somehow I never rooted out the scent of the beer, which I'm sure was lovely.  I suspect the LSD-like effects were preventing me from focusing my senses on that aspect.

I set the spreader down and took a few steps backwards as I regained my balance.  Dale, seemingly unaffected, shrugged and said it was OK but that he preferred pepperjack.  He wrapped the parcel back up and we agreed to share it with others to see if it might be appreciated more by someone else.

We took it to a friend's house for him to try.  He began unrolling the bag and seemed to think there was no cheese he didn't like.  Then he kindly asked us if we were sure it belonged in his basement as he quickly rolled the top of the bag back up in an attempt to seal in the refreshing flavours.  He was very nice about reminding us to take it with us when we left.  We have such honest, helpful friends.

I really love the texture of the cheese, it's very cool and creamy and would be an awesome dip if my sense of smell was nonexistent.  Until the next time I get all stuffed up and can't even smell cold germs, however, I think I'll stick with Brie.  Sorry, Winnimere, but... you're just not the cheese for me!

~w