Michael Kelley » 2001 » September » 11
Nothing new to add right now. We’re going through a disaster currently that’s almost 9/11 x 10 in the scope of things. No one knew that on September, 10, 2001 that the next day would set our country and our world down a course that could effect everyone for decades.
In reading all of this Katrina coverage, I’m slowly sinking in a despair that we’ve let these people down. Not really “us” but “u.s.”. In short, it’s not gonna be the government who will make things better, it will be the good and kind people in this country who can transcend any racist, cruel, etc attitude of people in power.
The events that are still transpiring would make other countries break into civil war. When you treat a poor, homeless group of your fellow citizens poorly and take away everything and treat them like a burden, then those who’ll pick up spades and sticks will fight. President Bush isn’t gonna be the uniter for this country. Our various branches of government won’t either. It will be up to everyone to push aside this bullshit and rebuild.
“how can I help?”
I’m trying to figure out a time to head down to that area to volunteer. I don’t like being up here knowing that people need as much help as they can get. Any bloggers want to pool some resources together to give our time and muscles to these people? Also, this Christmas, I’m not buying gifts for anyone but I am using that money for relief efforts.
That’s enough of my soap box, please feel free to comment….
I just don’t feel like I can form a sentence that can express just how sad I am and how much I want to help those who are so in need. I know what I go through in my life and it just feels just utterly pointless when I bitch and moan, when you think about the horrible decimation and destruction that some of my fellow southerners continue to deal with. I feel so helpless right now.
I’m trying to figure out how I can help. Aside from pointing anyone to donation center, I want to physically be of assistance. We’ve already decided that in lieu of Christmas presents this year, we’re going to put that money to better use by helping someone or anyone out. They need help now and they’re gonna need people donating time and money for much longer than we anticipate.
And I’m actually gonna say this, no matter how much I’ve disagreed with Dave Winer in the past, I have to say that I completely agree with him on so many levels. This is worse than 9.11.01. And when that happened we all were New Yorkers for that day. The country stopped. So yes, I am offended that we have states and hundreds of thousands of people effected and that aid is only now just starting to trickle in.
I just don’t know how we’re gonna handle this. Is it just gonna turn into some political bullshit, since we’re fighting a war abroad, and we’re rather weak on the homefront? Or will the current administration surprise everyone and not go on month long vacations and do those bullshit little photo ops and actually go to where they’re needed and work for those people who depend on the government?
For 5 years now, we’ve heard about protecting the homeland. Now we’re at a point to where we can now look back and see that protecting the homeland didn’t mean shit, since it was mainly used to enact laws that took away rights, instead of working on contingency plans for when bad shit, like this, went down. We’ve scrambled and we’re dealing with lack of water, lack of food, gas shortages, etc all within 5 days. 5 days. That is too long for our government to react.
I’m feeling anger, much sadness and wish I could help more than I can right now.
I here by predict that O’Reilly will not be attacked like others in their position. WordPress and Syndic8, much smaller companies and more cash-needy than O’Reilly, were pretty much made an example of, by having their questionable money-making links “exposed”.
In the guise of all things being equal, where’s the outrage on this one? Where’s the “I’m not gonna support ____ because they spam”? Was anything said about this at FooCamp?
My programmer and I worked until midnight last night to get our main workflow system functioning again. Then got back up at 6:30 to come into work.
I guess this, IT, is the type of life that a lot of people might not understand. Putting in more than the 8-5 type of hours, on salary, just to make the system work isn’t for everyone. Nor do some in this field understand that people depend on these systems and you “gotta do what ya gotta do” to get these (at times temperable) systems working by the time people come into work. Especially when you work in a highly deadline-driven industry such as the printing industry or a 24/7 environment like healthcare, you have to have the right mind-set.
I’m not the typical “Jolt Cola” geek, I just go in to make a system work and try to make it the best system for my customers. I fuck up, but you better believe that it’s not for lack of trying. Somedays you just sit back and just wish that you could have one of those BOFH-type of moments, when someone comes into your office for the 15th fucking time to say that something very trivial isn’t working….all while you’re in a server (or 2) remotely trying to keep it alive. Priorities in this world are : now, now and now. Doesn’t matter if it’s a down server or someone’s icon not showing up properly. You’re dealing with very serious matters and very trivial matters at the same time…and they’re all important.
So long hours, very busy days, and a very deeply thinking admin is something that I’ve been going through. I’m not working till Midnight on most evenings, but working late, remoting in, etc. It all drains you from time to time. It’s not for everyone, and I times I don’t know if it’s for me, but it’s a good feeling to work that hard on something knowing that now it’s working and now you can move on to the next task.
My mom just signed up to blog. I have no idea where it’s located, but I just have to say “Way To Go”!. I don’t think I’ve ever told her to start one and she is setting one up as we speak. Not sure what she’ll write about, probably like most of us, she’ll write about day-to-day life and her opinions. But it will be good to see Mom blogging.
This originally started because I saw a banner ad on a website, advertising the Spry web hosting. I started digging up more, like it was a true hollywood story, tracking the life and death of Spry. I *did* use them as an ISP and found this old post of Tim Oren’s where he goes through the list of what happened to Spry :
Purchased by Compuserve,
CompuServe purchased by AOL
AOL sells the Sprynet business to Earthlink
Don’t know what happened after that, since they’re a hosting company now.
I’m curious to know if AOL still owns the rights to the browser part of Spry. So at one point, AOL owned both the Netscape and Spry browsers and did absolutely nothing with them aside from running content-free ISPs with their names.
I know that at one point, Compaq removed Internet Explorer from their Presario desktops and replaced that with the Spry Navigator product. But that’s the last I remember of them. And if I’m not mistaken, mainly since I don’t have a lot of time to investigate this, is this the reason that Compaq filed a monopoly charge against Microsoft?
While I’m waiting on a DVD to finish burning, I thought I’d kinda put a “state of what’s going on” type of post up.
1.) We finally have a nice DVD duplicator in the house…attached to a Windows box. I’m sorry to all of my Mac friends out there, but I’ve had two very nice Powerbooks with two very nice superdrives and have yet to successfully duplicate a DVD. My Windows box does this without effort.
2.) In relation to #1, Netflix is cool.
3.) Our Compaq iPaq (the 4th Compaq I’ve personally owned), died…well kinda. It’s suffering with being underpowered with a failing hard disk. So I’ve replaced it with a hoss of P3 850mhz glory in a giant black case. I don’t need anything fancy at home, but it more than does the job. The iPaq is in the middle of being stripped down to bare metal, literally, and maybe made into a wireless server I can hide in my closet.
4.) I wound up going into work on my sick day. We had a server who could not see another server on one of our Windows domains. Luckily I remembered some old school lmhost-foo to fix that up. While I might not know Windows 2003 Server, I can make up for that with my DOS and ancient Windows networking chi.
5.) I also went into work Saturday. Everyone, (the artists) minus their IT dude…me, had been working all month without a Saturday off, so I felt like shit and went in to support their needs. Wound up having to break into a remote office to retrieve a backup tape for a job due on Monday. It’s so much easier to actually be in the office for this type of stuff, than having to have someone e-mail or call you, waking you up, to suggest this type of work.
6.) The past few times, I’ve taken someone to a restaurant in downtown Chattanooga, the service has just honestly sucked. Had the Tortilla Factory give me the wrong time during my time there, finally I just said, “forget it, I’m not eating nor am I paying for this bill”. So the management agreed and just asked that my party pay for drinks. Then Friday night at the Mellow Mushroom, the wait and service sucked royally. What killed me, is that MM is one of my favorite places to eat and I’ve now put it on my shit list. So I’ll stay away for about a year.
7.) The band is chugging along, finishing up arranging the final four songs in our original collection before we start trying to record. Right now, we could care less about performing live. We just want our music out there.
I’m out sick today and hate having to sit still and drink my water. I did make some killer “medicine”-noodle soup. The medicine part, is taking a lot of sauteed garlic and red pepper and dark chili powder and mixing it with chicken broth and nice noodles and a little olive oil and chicken chunks. I’ve ate like 3 bowls and my sore throat is gone and I feel much better too. I don’t feel great, but enough that I should be able to head into work tomorrow…instead of fielding calls and e-mails through my blackberry.
I think that’s one of the things that I actually like about my job. I’m always connected to email and the phone and if I’m sick, the VPN is great for taking a quick look at servers and the occasional desktop. All that coupled with a nice laptop is probably one of the best setups I’ve ever had at a job. I don’t think I would change a thing about that arrangement.
I think I’ve worked on about 5 calls today and spend some time eating soup and working with my boss on getting a server working or at least getting him the Compaq (HP, whatever) info. I might not have been in the office, but I’m getting paid for doing my job.
I’ll probably rest a little more and hopefully the calls will calm down until tomorrow am….knock on wood.
I work in tech, but I’m not a techie nor a tech-blogger. However I tend to be a geek about geeky crap, so I created a mini-blog called Cool Geeky Crap. It’s gonna be ran like my linkbloggy-blog, in the sidebar and really just links back to (what I think) are neat, cheap little tech thingies. I am a member of various associate programs, so from time to time those links will take you to “sponsored” links….however, if I don’t think it’s cool and geeky and (hopefully not) crap, then I’m not linking to it at all.