Local time where you're at. ("Where you're at"?)

[SCENE:  Deep space.  His Rudeness, Lord Darth Venomous is on his way back from a (ahem) personal errand...]

VENOMOUS:  I don’t think I like the tone of your “voice”, Narrator.

[And just what were you doing out of pocket for so long, (sarc) my liege????? (/sarc) (As if we didn't...gakkkkk...akkkkk)]

VENOMOUS:  Comprehension & cognizant thinking aren’t your strong suits, are they, dickweed?  (looks offstage, as the Narrator drops to the floor with a very  hollow sound)  Awright, Understudy, your turn.

[...from a personal errand, and is traveling in his personal courier, the Scorpion-class Excelsior.

A blinking console light catches the Admiral's attention.  He opens a channel.]

VENOMOUS:  Excelsior, Venomous.

KORRIOTH (over speaker):  Korriorh, Admiral.  Stellar cartography update for you, sir.

VENOMOUS:  Very good, Kor, shoot it through.

[He touches a few more switches and opens a separate channel to receive the download.  After five minutes, the download completes and the software channel closes.

At that very moment, everything goes dark as Excelsior  loses power & drops out of warp.

Lord Venomous sits there, non-plussed.]

VENOMOUS:  No, Narrator, just wondering what to do when I get back.

[Get back, m'lord?]

VENOMOUS:  Whether to Force-choke the p’tahk, or use my lightsaber to cut out one of his hearts.

—

Ever had an Ubuntu kernel update hose your system, Denizens?

That’s three days I’ll never get back.

Sigh.

I’m getting awfully damned good at re-doing my Linux box. (sigh)

Some guy name of Crager posted this on Facebook Friday afternoon.

So one of our fire stations starts having trouble with the dispatch system (receiving other stations’ calls, etc). In the process of troubleshooting, the station’s own dispatch computer crashes. Hard. The backup unit doesn’t work all that well, either (read: it doesn’t work at all).

So I get a known-good dispatch computer to the station, get it successfully re-configured, re-joined to the network, all that silliness – and no sooner do I get it online than the entire dispatch system citywide…goes toes-up.

Anyone wanna start a pool on how soon I go bald from tearing my hair out? %-P

Well, I hear tell this guy’s gone almost completely gray in the span of two months, so… 

[SCENE:  Still in the F'book Nexus.  Lord Darth Venomous is still on a rampage - only now, instead of bodies being dropped via Force-choke, only heads & various limbs are falling, the result of being severed by a whirling dervish of a purple lightsaber.

The blazing blade has come to rest mere inches from the last surviving soul in the vicinity - a Klingon who, ironically, bears a striking resemblence to former shipyardmaster Commander K'tinghe.

A fact that is not lost on His Rudeness.]

VENOMOUS (pointing blade at K’tinghe):  I should’ve known you were involved in this, you vile p’tahk!  How many limbs do you want to lose before I take your head?!?!?!

K’TINGHE (terrified):  M’lord…please…please, m’lord, I—

VENOMOUS:  YOU ARE GOING TO FIX MY SHIP SUCH THAT IT DOES NOT BREAK AGAIN, OR I WILL LAY WASTE TO THIS ENVIRONMENT AND YOU AND YOUR ENTIRE HOUSE WITH IT, DO YOU UNDERSTAND ME?!?!?!?!

K’TINGHE (terrified:  (ulp!) Uh, I—

VENOMOUS:  Nexus!!!  Transport me, this Klingon bastard, and the best ship’s computer system you have back to Pegasus!!!  DO IT NOW!!!!!

[A bright light appears and expands to engulf both His Rudeness and K'Tinghe.  As it fills the screen, we cut to...

SCENE:  The bridge of Pegasus  Lieutenant Commander Ozymandias McCool is briefing General Korrioth on repairs to the ship.]

OZY McCOOL:  Not the best news, General. Probably another week or so to bring the main core online. Has anyone notified the Admiral yet?

[At that precise moment, the bridge doors part, and in walks Venomous, with K'Tinghe in tow.]

VENOMOUS:  Ozy, I believe you’ll find the answer to all our difficulties in the main cargo bay.

[Ozy & Korrioth gape wide-eyed at the Klingon, who had previously been thought to have suffered Venomous' purple blade.  Korrioth, as usual, regains his composure first.]

KORRIOTH (nodding):  Very well, Admiral.  Come along, Ozy.  [They proceed out.]

VENOMOUS (grabbing K’Tinghe by his familial sash):  Now, you effin’ coward, we’re gonna go help them – and then  you get to beg for your life again like you did last time…!!! [He drags the frightened Klingon off the bridge towards Engineering.]

—

Okay, guys, the Big Box™ is back up and running – a 3.6 non-name-brand system board running Ubuntu 10.04.4 64-bit (and the requisite Win7 virtual machine for employing Outlook) with 16 gigs of RAM (and a brand new 2TB drive) out of Mrs. Venomous’ old Acer case.  (The old Big Box™ and its eight gigs have been redeployed as the work machine.)

We’ll see how long this lasts.  It had better (casts a menacing look towards K’Tinghe)…

Denizens, the good news is that both the machines are now back up & stable.

KORRIOTH:  For now.

VENOMOUS:  Oh, thanks, Django Downer.

MERLIN:  Well, y’know, it’s been, what, about three-plus years since the Great Hard Drive Upgrade Extravaganza™?  Remember what you’re always saying about electronic components?

VENOMOUS:  Yeah, yeah, yeah – they can fail at any time, for any reason…

ALL (in unison):  …or for no reason.

And even as I type this, the fan on the work box is very audibly reminding me that it’s in desperate need of replacement.

May be a bit before I get caught up (read:  finally post the long-over PFW recap(s)) – but I found a blurb from this column (dealing with pet peeves) this morning and had to repost.

Below the fold.  Go click it – it’s that damn good.

[SCENE:  Deep space.  Pegasus  is burning.

Cut to interior view, where crew members are hurrying into what passes for escape pods.  Cut to the ship's cramped excuse-for-a-cargo bay, where His Rudeness' personal courier, Excelsior...just blew up, narrowly missing Lord Venomous and General Korrioth.]

VENOMOUS:  So help me Cthulhu, Narrator, your union boss best get his ass to running…!

[What, you think this is my  fault?  I didn't write this crappy screenplay!]

VENOMOUS:  Like I’m supposed to take your word for it?  After what your predecessor pulled?

[You have my word, m'liege - I'm not responsible for this  one, promise.]

VENOMOUS:  Fine, then – into an escape pod with you.

KORRIOTH:  I don’t suppose you’ve got a separating bridge module up your sleeve, do you, m’lord?

VENOMOUS (grinning maniacally):  As luck would have it…mheh.  C’mon.

—

Denizens, this time both machines blew up at very nearly the same time.  Word to the wise:  if you have an older Core 2 or AMD64, don’t  upgrade to Ubuntu 12.04 64-bit.  It no likee.

The PFW recap will be delayed another day or so while I clean things up around here.

As we fade out from black, we see our intrepid command team huddled around the General’s Command Console intently looking at the screen. Faces are cringed, brows are furled, and a more than a few of the staff gathered are chewing on already nubby fingernails. Obviously it’s been a longgggggggg night.

{whispered conversations can be heard in the periphery}

SG RAYEGUN: I hope to hell that your job isn’t on the line AGAIN, techboy! I hate when I have to find someone with a clue. There are so few of them left these days!!

SSGT BANNER: Sir, would I be wearing this green bodysuit and be doped up on steroids….oh wait, wrong room. Seeya!

ALL: WTH??

LT KIM: General, I assure you there will not be a need for such measures. We have complete confidence in our work and this new system. Mr. Gates and Mr. Ballmer have assured us, repeatedly I might add, that there will not be a repeat performance.

SG RAYEGUN: For your sake, I hope so. Very well lieutenant, flip the switch.

LT KIM: Yessir.

CAPT ROGERS: Defense teams, take your positions, lock and load, safety off, set to maximum power. This is not a drill, I repeat THIS IS NOT A DRILL!

SG RAYEGUN: {looks untoward at the officer} Just a wee bit of overkill there captain???

CAPT ROGERS: Sir, you do remember the last time?

{the assembled mass mumbles and tries to support the captain while backing up as the general gets up from his chair}

SG RAYEGUN: One more snarky comment like that CAPTAIN and you’ll be a no stripe AIRMAN in less than 3 seconds. Do I make myself clear?

CAPT ROGERS:{visibly cringing} Umm yes sir…..

SG RAYEGUN: Get on with it already lieutenant. I’ve got work to do.

{camera pans left to see LT KIM flipping a big yellow switch while his other hand hovers precariously close to the emergency shutdown button}

LT KIM: {visibly relieved as he slowly pulls his hand back from the emergency shutdown} All systems normal, efficiency at 105%. Command ability at your discretion sir.

SG RAYEGUN: {the general punches in his access code and proceeds to get back to work} Thank you lieutenant. Nice job folks. You all get to keep your positions and rank. For now. Dismissed™

ALL: YESSIR!

{as the camera returns to center stage, flies in over the generals head, and zooms in to the Command Console screen}

Yes folks, the Southern Command has officially commenced its conversion to Windows 8 Pro. My big box is fully functional, minus a few minor utility apps. Things are running better than the clean install of Windows 7 Ultimate but getting used to the new UI will be fun. Luckily I’ve had Win8 running in a virtual session and have had time to play around with the UI in the sandbox. One bonus I did discover, and Darth you’ll find this most interesting. It seems that Microsoft finally got the clue. In IE10 a long-standing oversight has been corrected. As Darth has previously been wantonly rambling on about how this fine blog had its appearance “quirks” under IE (namely it was left-shifted on the page, not centered like with Firefox, Chrome, etc), well I can tell you now that it has been fixed. See below for the proof:

Darth, you’re welcome.

If you can, go check out Win8. If you don’t like the Win8 UI, you can always switch to the desktop view and just run things from there. If you go that route, you’ll notice that there is not a START button anymore. If that just freaks you out to no end, I already have a remedy for that illness. Check out Stardock Software‘s Start8 as it will fix the problem.

ThatIsAll™

[SCENE:  Realm™ command.  Delta Shift is positively bored, and technicians Holland and Craft are so bored, they're playing two-dimensional chess.]

HOLLAND:  So d’ya think we’ll ever get out of Rayegun’s doghouse?

CRAFT:  Not unless His Rudeness or Cap’n Korrioth give the word.  And given that they’re in the Umagakhali Nebula at the moment, we’re prob’ly stuck here a while…

[Pan past Craft's shoulder to a monitor showing nothing but deep space...until...

[SCENE:  Deep space.  We see the newly-minted ISS Pegasus  floating out amongst the stars.  The senior staff having transferred over, Poseidon  and Apparition  have warped back towards Realm™ territory.

Cut to Pegasus'  bridge, where the staff is gathered around Admiral Darth Venomous in the command chair.]

VENOMOUS:  So once they found out who I was, they actually offered to rebuild Pegasus  for us…

KORRIOTH:  “Us”, m’liege?

VENOMOUS:  Well…they actually knew me from my association with you.  You & Kha have quite the fan club over there, y’know.

K’HADIBAK’H:  Indeed.  One wonders why we’re not the stars of this show, rather than you.

VENOMOUS:  Because it’s my blog, bumpy.

K’HADIBAK’H:  (grunt)

VENOMOUS:  And with that, let’s get underway, shall we?  Stations, please, and set course for the Badlands.

[All take their seats, and K'hadibak'h programs his course.  He turns toward the admiral after a few moments.]

K’HADIBAK’H:  Course laid in, Admiral.

VENOMOUS:  Very well, Mr. K’hadibak’h.  Warp four whenever you’re ready.

[Kha touches a couple of controls, then pushes the drive lever forward to engage the engines.  The ship's great engine rev up...

...then rev back down & quit as the lights go out on the bridge.]

VENOMOUS:  Soon as I find that damned ribbon again, some engineer is gonna lose his head.

—

No sooner do I pronouce my machine as fit, then it dies on me.

Then again, near as I can tell, it appears to have been of my own doing this time.  Looks like I changed an access permission I wasn’t supposed to.

Oh, well.  That’s how I learned Windoze; it’s how I’ll learn Linux.

I have already learned one thing, though: Whereas it takes about three to six hours to rebuild a Windoze box, it takes all friggin’ weekend to rebuild a Linux distro. (And fully half of that  was spent coaxing the video driver to give me something slightly better than 640×480.)

Sigh.

So I’m getting ready for work, when I get a call from a longtime friend of mine.

Asks me a techie-type question, which – being a techie-type – I dutifully try to answer.

Right in the middle of the answer, he interrupts me – as he has a nasty habit of doing when I’m trying to explain something computer-related to him – and goes off into a tangent about how all of us geek-types are (paraphrasing here) bastards who can be trusted to do everything but what you wanted done to your computer in the first place, and will format your hard drive and put another operating system on the thing whether you wanted it or not, never mind it was an OS you didn’t want in the first place…

…etc, etc, ad infinitum, ad nauseam.

And I’m sitting there thinking “So, old friend, why the fuck did you call me in the first fucking place?”

(UPDATE:  Just so you know, Denizens, this guy, bless his heart – and I mean that in the Bob-from-HMS sense – is the same one who once blamed me for crashing his Windows NT system, years ago.  Right after I found said system’s C: drive at 95% of capacity.  And no – that’s not a typo, either.)

Beware the user who has a little knowledge.  They think they know a helluva lot more than they actually do.

Does that sound arrogant?

Good.

It damn well should.

And I say this knowing full-effing-well that there are techs (probably some even living as close as within my complex) who have forgotten twice as much as I’ll ever know.  And I respect that, and them, with all the inherent bowing & scraping that that implies.

But I’ve been honing this craft now for TWENTY FUCKING YEARS, DAMMIT!!!!! – and by that, I mean a minimum  of eight to ten hours a day (many days a lot more than that, more all-nighters, fried hard drives, system boards and video cards than I feel like counting), 24/7/365 – and I’m getting just a little  bit sick & fucking tired of being questioned by fuckfaces who think they can code the next great Micro$oft operating system just from having watched me defragment their hard drive for five @($!!^(!!!! minutes.

Next time you feel the need to question something I’m doing to your computer – such as, say, ripping out the latest malware you’ve downloaded from GayBathHousePorn.com – try & remember that you called me, jack, and there’s a 99 44/100% chance that I might, just might  know more than you.

Otherwise, computer physician, heal thine own fucking self.  I got better things to do.

Like watch my toenail fungus grow. 

Unfortunately, Denizens, I don’t have any stories to tell about having kicked an Occupussy’s ass during my Black Friday shopping experience (yes, I went – scored myself a damn good monitor, too), so here’s something gleaned from the Backyard™, courtesy of my sister-in-law:

Note, if you will, that this particular laptop is running…Ubuntu.

Cool, huh? 

Drudge has reported (and Fox News has confirmed) that Steve Jobs, one of the founders of Apple Computer, Inc, is dead of an unspecified cause at the age of 56.

His family, in a statement released by Apple, said Mr. Jobs “died peacefully today surrounded by his family…We know many of you will mourn with us, and we ask that you respect our privacy during our time of grief.”

The company didn’t specify the cause of his death. Mr. Jobs had battled pancreatic cancer and several years ago received a liver transplant. In August, Mr. Jobs stepped down as CEO, handing the reins to Tim Cook.

“Apple has lost a visionary and creative genius, and the world has lost an amazing human being,” Mr. Cook said in a letter to employees. “We will honor his memory by dedicating ourselves to continuing the work he loved so much.”

My first ever computer was an Apple IIc.  Had a lot of fun on that thing – there was a football game on it that I loved.  Aggravated me no end when Jobs ditched the II series for what was then something called the Lisa™ – later to become the Macintosh.  Then the iMac, then the iPod, iTunes, then the iPad, and all the innovations that arose therefrom.

Yeah, he probably was right about leaving me high & dry on that. (rueful grin)  PC-dom would not be where it is now without Steve Jobs.

The Realm™ mourns Steve’s death, and sends its sincerest condolences & well wishes to his family.  We are very, very  sorry he’s gone, and will remember him most fondly.

[SCENE:  Realm™ spacedock.  In the abscence of Lord Darth Venomous (whom, you will recall, is currently languishing in Facebook Hell™), Supreme General Rayegun has arrived from the Southern Command™ to oversee things.  His first order of business was to organize a search for the Admiral.

He is conferring now with Captain Korrioth, Realm™ shipmaster Commander K'tinghe and the rest of the senior staff.]

RAYEGUN:  So where is this ribbon now?

KORRIOTH:  Badlands, General.  Specifically, Sector 11287, in the Hogan system.  Estimated 3.1 days until it hits the Umagakhali Nebula.

RAYEGUN:  And you still believe His Snarkiness is in there.

OZY MCCOOL:  His last known position, yes, General.

RAYEGUN:  Very well. What do we have in the way of ships around here?

K’TINGHE:  We’ve come up with this prototype—

RAYEGUN:  You are not  sending the prototype in there after my friend, Commander, is that clear???

K’TINGHE:  Uh, not that  prototype, General.

[K'tinghe moves to the wall display on the far wall and touches a control.  A nasty, sleek-looking, dark-charcoal gray battlecruiser appears on the display.]

K’TINGHE:  General, this is the fleet’s newest vessel – Pegasus II.  We have built it with the strongest titanium alloy available, and coated it with a neutronium armor.  It is currently rated to withstand 2.5 times the amount of gravometric turbulence that our previous ships could tolerate.  It is ideal for going into areas that would tear apart other, lesser ships.

RAYEGUN:  Such as the perimeter of this ribbon.

K’TINGHE:  Aye, sir.  But that’s not the best part.  (K’tinghe touches another control.)  Look what we’re powering it with.

[Rayegun's mouth virtually hits the floor.]

RAYEGUN:  I don’t believe it.  He finally took my suggestion and put—

MERLIN:  Well, it wasn’t exactly  his idea.  Amazing what you can accomplish when a technical Luddite isn’t around to put the kibosh on things.

ALL: 

RAYEGUN:  Very well, then.  Get this ship prepped and on its way.  I can’t imagine we have all that  much time.

KORRIOTH:  Aye, General. (to K’tinghe) Move.

K’TINGHE (with a suddenly tight look on his face):  Captain—

KORRIOTH:  Is there a problem, Commander?

K’TINGHE(gulping almost audibly):  No, m’lord.  On my way.

[He turns to go, a sullen look on his face.  Korrioth ponders this for a moment, then turns his attention away, filing the sequence for later.]

—

Changes are coming.

Not anything that’ll affect you guys, but they’ll be fun to talk about, once in place.  (Well, they will be for the geeks among us, anyway.)

Watch this space.

The General – along with the rest of you anti-Microsoft bigots (grin) – will be pleased to learn that Yours Truly™ has started down the path of one particular Dark Side™.

For this post…is being written on a Linux box.

More later.  Gotta go pick up Mrs. Venomous’ car and cough up $500 to turn off a “check engine” light. 

Browsing through my collection of Intertubes favorites, I came across this article on Engadget.

Here’s just the splashy numbers:

There are SSDs and then there are SSDs — the Texas Memory Systems (TMS) RamSan-70 is definitely the latter, packing 900GB of high-speed SLC NAND flash onto a single half-length PCIe card. Boasting an incredible 2GB-per-second sustained external throughput, this near-terabyte solid state drive is clearly overkill for most of us, considering that it’s guaranteed to have a sky-high price (once details are released). Instead, the “900GB Gorilla,” as it’s come to be known around TMS HQ, is destined for high-end servers — though we certainly wouldn’t object to clearing out a slot in our desktop, if by some miracle we can afford this monster when it starts shipping in four to eight weeks.

Oh. Emm. Gee!!!!

The manufacturer lovingly calls it the “900GB Gorilla”. Although pricing will clearly put it out of the range of basically everything except the high-end server market….it would be seriously SUH-WEEET in a desktop case near the Command Bunker. Guess the General is going to need to put in the Purchase Order Request later this summer when this gem is available on the market.

ThatIsAll™