Year: 2004

Have I ever mentioned how brilliant my neighbors are? Lets put it this way, there are four parking spots next to my building, which has four apartments. Guess how many cars each apartment can fit in the driveway? That’s right, 2 or 3. I don’t even mind the extra cars they want to keep around (Hoboken is one of the worst towns for parking). There are even two “illegal” spots at the end that they can use (technically they are fire zones, but they aren’t marked properly). Still they often park in such a horrendous manner that my girlfriend marvels at my reversing skills. Yet all I can do is bitch and moan. This morning, however, is one of the prime examples of their absolute stupidity.

With 3 possible spots open (two apartment spots and one “freebie”), someone decided to park in the middle of the lane used to actually exit. Of course the only car they managed to block in was mine. So I find myself already running late for work, and now I have to start banging on doors. I was a little peeved at first, but I figured it was probably someone who just stopped in real quickly and the timing just happened to be off. Instead I find no one home. Ok, one neighbor out of three apartments is there, and he figures it’s probably from the other apartment like I did. So for the first time in 4 years I had to call the police and ask for a tow truck to come remove a car illegally parked in my driveway. I will be writing a very stern letter to my landlord this weekend explaining how big of an impact my neighbors have played in none of us re-signing a lease. In the meantime it’s about quarter to 11, and all I can do is sit here… waiting for the man.

Update – So it turns out it wasn’t one of my neighbors’ cars, which would explain why I didn’t recognize it. We hadn’t had a problem like that in awhile, so I was surprised when this happened. I wasn’t home yet, but they stopped by simply to ask what had happened (was it stolen or towed) so they knew who to ask. Unfortunately I never got around updating on here that it had been towed, so my roommates assumed it, but didn’t know for sure.

It looks like a friend of theirs was heading into the city, so they told her she could park there during the day – not really a big deal. They told her specifically to pull all the way up. Apparently she thought it would be a better idea to park in the middle of the driveway with the doors unlocked and the keys in the car. The tow truck guy went into the car, but it took us awhile before we noticed the keys (he wanted to back it up since he said he couldn’t tow from behind). I just handed them over to him because I wanted no part of it at that point. But the neighbors were cool about it. Brian said they apologized and basically said she could wait until Monday to get her car.

This is at once the cutest and saddest story. The pictures are just priceless, and the ending isn’t a complete tragedy.

(thanks to eclecticism)

This morning started off in a meeting with a sales rep from a disaster recovery firm. While going over all of the services they offer (which were almost all way more than we need) she touched upon the nation-scale of the company. They have regional centers all over the US that are identically setup to make it easy for companies to recover their data anywhere. She quickly add, “I know what you’re thinking, why wouldn’t we just go use [the closest one]? But God forbid the te-disaster takes out the whole region…” It was the ‘te’ right before she said disaster that caught my attention. Most people wouldn’t have even noticed it as I don’t believe the sound even fully escaped her lips. But I knew exactly what word that was meant to begin – ‘terrorists’.

It was so interesting to me because I knew it was rather subconscious for her. She had no intention of using the threat of a terrorist attack as part of her sales pitch; it just happened to be the first thought to pop into her mind in that context. Our lives have changed so drastically since 9/11 that it is no longer just the big news stories we see differently. When the entire Northeast loses power, there’s no real shock in people questioning the possibility of an outside attack. But even in day-to-day speech those events have become a backdrop for all. Words that we once spoke only in reference to the Middle East and various Third-World nations are suddenly an intrinsic part of our vocabulary. Amazing how even the most subtle miscue can reflect upon the very depth of our transformation.

Anyone who thinks that I often have way too obscure taste in music needs to check out Other Music. Their updates tend to make me look like some sort of Britney Spears/Limp Bizkit butt puppet. This week, for example, included an ad for a band that, at the very least, Jen could appreciate (well, me too) – Gay for Johnny Depp. This is some vicious hardcore that’s not meant for the workplace – the kind of stuff I intially scoff at only to find myself purchasing the CD two weeks later.

I did, in fact, reward myself with a little bit o’ the Nag’s last night. And my, what an excellent decision that was. There were only a couple people I knew when I walked in, and they were stuck at the front of the bar, so I decided to wander down to the other end and chat with Heather for a bit. Unforunately, the special chair at the end was taken and I found myself just standing around waiting for her to finish up with a customer. But before she could, someone walked out of the bathroom and stood next to me searching through a bag. I looked over and cleared my throat to get her attention. Allison looked up and, finally realizing it was me, flashed a big smile and let out an “Oh my God!”

Allison worked Sundays at the Nag’s a few years back. She’s a really cool person, and a lousy bartender. That’s why we all had a blast hanging out there on such a slow day. The first time I ordered a screwdriver and she had to confer with Barney over the ingredients, I knew I would stick with beer from then on 🙂 . Since she stopped working there and moved out of Hoboken, I see her on rarer and rarer occasions. Generally we bump into each other rather randomly at the Bar, and after a whirlwind of drinks I wake up thinking “What the hell happened last night?” Yeah, she’s fun.

Last night she and her boyfriend were on their way out when I came in, but thanks to Barney they ended up sticking around a while longer. So we spent the night drinking beer (good to get back to some Guinness on tap), swapping stories (Allison’s life always seems so glamourous, with a fairly high profile job and numerous celebrity encounters), and playing darts (which we won – thanks to my solid play and Allison’s closing round of a single and double bulls). Now we’re going to try to get together again real soon, before Lisa and I move more than 2 blocks from the Nag’s.

Lisa and I have been saying we would start exercising and eating better any day now. Well, at the very least we’ve been eating better these days in the form of doing our own cooking (at least Lisa has been). So the last two nights we’ve been working on the exercise portion. For now it’s just a short jog and lots of stretching, but I feel good about it. Combined with some guitar-playing and some cleanup, I suddenly feel like I’ve accomplished something tonight. Funny what can happen when you ignore all the crap you feel you should be doing on your computer. Maybe I’ll head over to the Nag’s for a little bit – a little reward for a job well done.

Everybody wants one – well, everybody except Max Thrane that is. That’s right, Max is bucking the trend and writing about why he hates Gmail. And honestly, I can’t blame him. I decided I would really like to get one for myself (to try out, and of course to preserve the uniqueness that is indieb0i) and for Lisa (because Hotmail sucks). Unfortunately Gmail is still in beta and the only “reliable” way to get an inite is through some form of swapping – and that’ just not worth it to me. So I actually opened a Blogger account to which I will crosspost in an attempt to get an offer from them (oh yeah, and possibly to steal the design 😉 ). Hey, I’d love to get an invite from someone (*hint* *hint*), but I’m not going to jump through hoops just because Google has completely screwed up their public beta by essentially making it some sort of exclusive geek club.

Update: I have achieved a new level of geekdom. Yes, that’s right, I now have indieb0i at gmail dot com as another e-mail address. I have set it as another destination for my Pobox accounts to forward to. And it’s all thanks to this guy. So far it looks cool (with what little e-mailing I’ve done in it’s first hour of life), and I’ll be sure to write a full review after a week or so of playing around.

I’ve been somewhat quiet, but I have a lot to say these days. I just haven’t had the time to say it. I’m busy at work finalizing network designs and I’m busy at home looking for a new place for Lisa and I. We’ve got something or another to do pretty much everyday. I haven’t even had a chance to talk about spending time at the OpenMic with Sandy on Tuesday. Oh well, today we’re taking the day off and heading to Hershey Park. I left my co-workers with this message:

[P]lease try to schedule any computer crashes for next week so that my Friday isn’t too busy.

Once again, I’m a tad confused:

My japanese name is ?? Akimoto (autumn book) ? Shun (fast person).
Take your real japanese name generator! today!
Created with Rum and Monkey‘s Name Generator Generator.

… to upgrading my company’s firewalls. Fedora Core 2 now runs the brand-spankin’ new Linux 2.6 family of kernels. That’s pretty cool, I’ve been waiting for that to be “mainstream ready”. Hey, that even includes builtin IPSEC for real VPNs. Alright! That means it no longer includes support for CIPE. Crap! That’s how my old VPN was working.

Now I’m desperately trying to upgrade the other facility’s firewall to Fedora Core 2 so that I can rebuild the VPN while waiting to install their new system. Down here it’s great, I can now actually monitor what’s going on far better than before, and keep an eye on the Internet usage. I have no plans to really limit my co-workers, but I do need to keep things running smoothly. And, as always, I can apply my new found knowledge to my own server. Of course who knows what will become of all this once Lisa and I move at the end of July.