Disappearing Finger Trick

This is a picture of my hand, taken during the angiogram I had in early September.



See why that one finger is cold? Yeah, noooooooo blood.

See how much there is in the other fingers? Especially the tips?

Song of the DayBee Gees - I Started a Joke

Noooooooo reason, except for that The Dirtbomb's version of this song came up randomly and reminded me how good this song is.

But here, I went back to the original.

Damn it Jim, I'm a Designer not a System Administrator!

****WARNING!!****GEEK SPEAK POST****WARNING!!****

You most likely won't give a shit about this, but it has occupied my thoughtspace for almost the entire week, and so I blog.

We have a dedicated web server at HAM that has been hosted for years with Rackspace, so many years in fact that the hosting facility it was housed in is not even used as a hosting facility anymore. The OS, Windows 2000, has reached its end-of-life, as has SQL Server 2000, AS has the box it was all installed on.

So they upgraded us to a new hosting facility, with a new box that has Windows 2003 Server and SQL Server 2003 installed, which is AWESOME! And FREE!

Only problem is, everything that was hosted on that box had to move to the new box. Web sites. Client presentation pages. Multiplayer servers. The whole shebang.

Who's job description does all that fall under?

*crickets chirping*

Yeah, no one. So... me.

Luckily, I don't mind such things. My left brain functions as well as my right, and it knows just enough to be dangerous when it comes to all things technical. I can really break something without much effort at all.

Like our voicemail system.

A day after I pointed a subdomain that I barely remembered to the new server, one of our developers noticed he wasn't getting his voicemail in his email anymore. Hmmm. Funny thing.

Oh, wait. That's right -- we had to fake out our old voicemail system and relay its email messages through the old web server to get them to send properly.

Well, I done did broke dat good.

I wasn't about to purchase another license to install a mail server on the new web server just for this one instance, so I opted to set up the mail server in IIS with the help of some tutorials on the internets. I then set up an email account in Mail and successfully sent an email through the new server.

AWESOME.

Except when I configured the voicemail server to use the new server, messages did not come through at all, and the only error it gave was some stupid generic (ec=2) thing that could be anything.

CRAP.

After I got the kids to bed last night, I scoured the internet for clues about why the goddamn voicemail system was being an asshole and came up pretty much dry, until I saw someone's hint to someone else to use this tool called Wireshark. I installed it on the voicemail server so I could see what the actual network traffic could tell me, and though I don't speak Network Traffic, that whole knows-enough-to-be-dangerous thing paid off. I was able to decipher enough to realize that I'd been blaming the wrong asshole.

The problem wasn't the voicemail server, it was IIS on the new server. Even though the voicemail server was acting like it should, IIS didn't like the way it was talking to it, so it wouldn't talk to the voicemail server at all.

See? Asshole.

So anyway, with the help of the internets again and some more detailed error codes that IIS was throwing up, I got to the heart of it and had to go in and change some deeply hidden registry key sorta thing to make IIS be a little more forgiving.

When I finally beat it, I actually whoooped out loud and started clapping for myself. Right there in the office.

I know, sounds NOTHING like me, right? ;)

Song of the DayLaura Veirs - Wide-Eyed, Legless

More Laura Veirs! Toss-up between this and the other song I posted which is my fav.

Maybe, just MAYBE, I don't have to have a fav!

Song of the DayChairlift - Bruises

This was one of Cole's favorite songs this summer. Had I been blogging, I'd most certainly have added it then!

Quote of the Day

So, the fall weather has had me feeling domestic and wanting to cook fall-type stuff, so I've been baking apple muffins and making apple pancakes and homemade chili and such. Today, I felt like knoephla soup.

So, I made a vegetable knoephla soup for dinner that was pretty damn good if I do say so myself. While we were eating, Cory finished his bowl lickity split and then following exchange occurred.

Cory: "Can I have another bowl? This soup is GOOD."

Daddy: "You like it, eh? Ya know why?"

(This is where I usually say "Because there's LOVE in it," but Cory jumped in with a re-direct.)

Cory: "Because there are DUMPLINGS in it."

Cole: "Yeah. LOOOOVE dumplings."

[comedic beat]

Cory: "Cole, don't ever say those words again."

How could I NOT laugh out loud?

The Trees Are Exploding!

With color that is.



I had to break out the camera and just shoot a few pictures while the sun was sorta out and the colors are at their peak, which I think they are.

I should have walked down Deephaven Avenue and shot the reds and browns and oranges and purples but alas, I didn't.

But holy crappers, ain't this beautiful?

Song of the DayKermit the Frog - It's Not Easy Being Green

So, The Current played this one morning as part of their 9:30 Coffee Break. The theme was songs with colors.

I'd heard it of course, but after hearing it again and getting goosebumps, I HAD to have it. Talking about The Muppets in last night's post reminded me of it again.

Enjoy. The goosebumps.

Gremlins Ruined Christmas

The boys and I ran to Blockbuster after our frozen pizzas intending to get Ice Age 3. However, we discovered that it isn't in stores for another week. Luckily, Cole had a Plan B.

A year and a half ago, I'd kinda pushed Cole into renting a classic 80's movie instead of the usual SpongeBob Squarepants episodes that he always insisted on when he was uninterested in anything else, as chronicled in this post. Since then the boys have voluntarily seen things like the Muppet Movies, Karate Kid, BeetleJuice, Edward ScissorHands, and ET among others.

Cole's Plan B was either Gremlins or Goonies. So we rented both. Tonight, we watched Gremlins. I forgot how gratuitously violent it is for a kids movie! I mean, the mom stabs a gremlin like 5 times with a kitchen knife, puts one in the microwave and we see it explode, later on there are gremlins randomly shooting gremlins in the bar while playing poker... At the end they pop open a gas line and pump it into the theater where the gremlins are all watching Snow White & The Seven Dwarfs and blow the whole place up to kill them all.

I bring this up not because had I remembered the violence, I wouldn't have let them watch it. More because My Memory of Gremlins does not match Gremlins, and that surprised me.

Anyway, I also forgot the story the girl tells about why she hates Christmas in which she talks about how she learned there's no Santa Claus.

Awesome.

She had to tell that right there in front of my boys. I mean, they're almost 13 and 11, but they are still letting us think they believe!

Gremlins can't take that away from me!

Song of the DayBird And The Bee - You're a Cad

This one's a toe-tapper. Theriouthly.

I've been happily pushing pixels around all day, and this song had me humming and whistling along in addition to the toe tapping.

Of course, I've kinda been doing that all day, and am sure my employees wish I'd shut the hell up.

The Luckiest Tiny Type Ever

So, I was wondering exactly what I'd blog about today, that is until I took the trash out just now and got the mail.

I'd put the recycling on the street right next to the mailbox and had taken out the one piece of mail today saw, which was a magazine.

Now, I'm sorry, but I don't know how or when I was graced with a subscription to MAXIM, but it was not by my doing. I don't read it. I don't even look at the pictures.

Don't get me wrong, I like pictures of scantily-clad women any day, but the highly-photoshopped and glitzed-up girls of MAXIM just aren't my thing. It shows up and literally goes from the mailbox into the recycling bin outside.

Except this time.

With one hand holding the lid of the recycling bin open and the other about to pitch the magazine into it, I caught a glimpse of the headline "Battlestar Babes" and then recognized the two babes on the cover to be the two hot Cylon flesh-jobs. (Yes, I speak BSG, frak off.)

I took it inside. (Come on, they're HOT.)

When I got the cover inside into the light, I noticed the little block of copy strategically placed over the coming-together of their backsides.



That made it all worth it, even moreso than the highly-photoshopped and glitzed-up Battlestar Galactica girls, MAXIM-style.

P.S. If you, dear reader, are the giver of the subscription to MAXIM and I have very inconsiderately forgotten you'd gifted it to me, I am very sorry.

Song of the DayVampire Weekend - One (Blake's Got A New Face)

Music makes everything better.

Vampire Weekend's coming out with a new album soon. Well, January. If they come to the Twin Cities on their tour, guess who'll be there?

Today's Victims

So, though I can't attribute it caffeine, here's what fell victim to today's flurry of activities:

The "junk" t-shirt drawer
As I did to the sock community yesterday, I did unto the junk t-shirt drawer today. I just simply don't paint enough to need that many junk shirts. Out with ye!

(All the other clothes now fear me, as well they should.)

Three large Fireside apples
I had to accelerate the consumption of the orchard apples that the boys and I picked a couple weeks ago (lest they go bad) and decided to make a batch of deeeeelicious apple muffins and another tray of apple crisp, which was even better than the first.

My waistline
I ate two of the muffins, a piece of apple crisp, and a threw in a few bites of a scrumptious piece of pecan pie that had been graciously given to me.

Granted, I did get a workout in so I don't feel so bad about the goodies, but still. I'm sure eating with wild abandon like I have been lately will eventually catch up with me.

This was a productive weekend as it turns out. In addition to everything I've already mentioned this weekend, I installed the new parts in the grill I inherited off the streets and fired it up successfully, did laundry, got an oil change, ran some errands, mega-dosed the hell out of my developing sore throat, finished season 2 of LOST, and squeezed in a little fun too.

Life is good.

Strong Coffee & Sock Drawers

Helllooooooo World!!

So, this is the second weekend in a row without the boys and I'm kicking it off right with far too much caffeine. Ya know what effect that has on me?

Well, many actually.

1. It makes me have to poop. (Sorry, just tellin' it like it is.)
2. It makes me get creative, or at least think that crazy ideas that start popping into my head are way better than they really are.
3. It opens a very narrow window in which I feel like tackling every single thing I've been putting off for the past 6+ months.

Like my sock drawer. I cannot believe how many pairs of socks I have, and more importantly, cannot fathom what has possessed me to hold on to the the thirty odd pairs that are either paper thin or have holes in them.

So, today I purge. I'm going through the sock drawer and without mercy ditching anything thin, hole-y, or that hasn't had the privilege of being on my feet within the past two years.

While the window is open anyway.

As soon as the buzz wears off I'll be back to wondering what to do with myself.

Look at me! I just make a blog post!

Song of the DayLaura Veirs - When You Give Your Heart

If you haven't heard of Laura Veirs, you need to give this a listen. Apparently she used to have an all girl punk rock band, but this stuff is just deeeeeeeelicous.

Thank you, bluebird.