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My brother’s girlfriend’s sister’s computer wasn’t working  so I figured I’d give it a crack.  My standard test setup is a 20″ monitor, with a ps/2 keyboard and mouse which were useless as this computer had a DSUB 15 monitor connector and no ps/2 ports only USB.  I plugged in my spare G15 and MX518 and was able to boot into the BIOS and did some initial checks.  I then booted to Windows XP and was stymied by the keyboard and mouse not being recognized.  Well they were, but I needed to click the little button to let Windows load the appropriate drivers, which I couldn’t do, as I had no keyboard or mouse… until I clicked on that button, which I couldn’t.

I’m normally impressed with what I can only call the tenacity of Windows to create drivers out of bubblegum and tape to figure out something.  Sure it may cut your printing speed by a factor of 10 or your monitor will only show 4  colors but it works until you can get something done.  Today, that died…

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I was going back and forth between the R&D lab and the CAD room when I found a woman, walking dazed with two cupped hands full of broken glass.  It looked like her desk lamp broke as it was that green frosted glass.  She looked at me:

Her: Do you know where I put glass?
Me:  Yes….
Her: Ok, I’ll follow you.
Me: No.  You stay here, I’ll bring a container.

She stood there, stiff as a board, until I returned with a sharps container.  She deposited the glass and life returned to her face.  She thanked me and wandered away… I met her in a part of the build that is no where near the cubes like she’d broken her lamp and resolved herself to the life of the wandering hermit until she found a place to put it.  Would one not leave the broke glass in place, find a repository, and then dump it rather than walking around a building with hands full of broken glass?

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I was on my treadmill talking in Team Interrobang’s VoIP client when another member said they had a favor to ask of me.  We move to another channel and he asks me to order him a pizza from a place down the street from him which is still 900 miles from as he lives in a college town in Kentucky.  Apparently, his girlfriend took their mobile phone to work and with no landline I, walking on a treadmill 900 miles away, was the only impediment to him dying of starvation.  So he gives me his order, address, and his credit card number.  All goes swimmingly, the delightful accent of the sorostitute that answered the phone, the country/western hold music and the order itself, until she asks the following:

Pizza Shop Employee: Ok, so that’s one Baldie’s Special no olives.  What’s the phone number for this order.
Me: I don’t know.
Pizza Shop Employee: Uh…

-Contemporaneously with yokel confusion-

My Brain: Fool! You’re using a phone give her that number!
Me: Yes.  I just got a new Google voice number, I’ll use that.
My Brain: Now you’re thinking.  Good thing you didn’t give her the number for the phone you’re currently using that you could respond to immediately, that would make sense.

Me: *gives Google voice number to which I only get messages as a mp3 in my inbox until I setup forwarding*
My Brain: You’re a genius!

I later found out that his orders can be practically delivered on foot and he probably could have ordered by opening his appartment window and yelling.  I guess in his imaciated state he lacked the energy to do such.  I was miffed until I realized something: I still have his credit card number, expiration date, and card verification code in a text file on my desktop that’s been recently renamed “Blitz_Blackmail.txt”.

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I came into work late today not remembering I had a blood drive appointment at 1:30.  I saw the reminder note to myself at 1:20 and gunned it to the appropriate building in our complex.  I arrived sweating but on-time and was immediately hurried in to make it on time.  I sat down, had my blood pressure taken (120/80 in your face obesity!) but was rejected because of my pulse being too high (100 BPM), probably because I’d ran to the building.  I was then approached by the coordinator.

Coordinator: Sir, your pulse was too high to donate do you have any conditions that’d cause this?
Me: Not really, I did just run over.
Coordinator: Hm… Have you had a stressful day?  There seems to be a lot of stressed people in.
Me: Nope, I just got in, but I did just run over here.  If you give me a minute, I’ll be fine.
Coordinator: Do you have a history of a high pulse in your family?
Me: I don’t think so, although I imagine all our pulses go up after running.
Coordinator:  Hm… You’ll be ok.  I’m going to give you a note that you can’t donate for the day because of your pulse and you should really see a medical professional about that.  100 BPM is not healthy.

Well, I’m glad they’d already taken my pulse and BP as it doubled over the course of her ignoring the fact that I’d just ran to the building.  I’d be curious to see if deafness is correlatable to proximity to the end of the work day.

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I ordered a few pieces of glassware for a project I’m working on.  Most of the 24/40 pieces arrived except for the West Condenser, so I sent the firm an email and received the following:

Sir, thank you for promptly notifying us of the problem with your order.  Due to a recent string of faked shipping errors we require verification before sending out a replacement.  Please take a picture of the piece you did not receive and we will gladly provide a replacement.

Wow… How do I respond to that?  “Show us what you didn’t get”.   Maybe this is like a stupid criminal candid camera moment where people send in pictures and they reply with “gotcha, biotch!”  So the best I was able to do was send them a picture of the blank spot in the distillation kit.   I hope that works, barring that, I’ll send them the works of Charles Sanders Pierce.

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My father asked me to leave his car insurance policy and while I lost the multicar discount I’d enjoyed being merely one car in the 12 vehicle Robinson fleet it was nice to finally get the coverage I’d wanted.  I had a policy picked out from Progressive and one from State Farm.  Progressive allowed me to purchase online and State Farm required a call to finalize the rate so I contacted my local agent to see if they could do one better.  I talked to the fellow and immediately felt like I was talking to a sack of grapefruits but the final two straws were as follows:

Him: Ok, and stacking your uninsured/uninsured rider will cost an extra $12 but double your coverage.
Me: Why would I stack coverage for a single vehicle?
Him: Some people just want the extra coverage.
Me: …..
(Stacking is an option where if you have multiple vehicles, the benefit is applied separately to each.  So if you have a $100,000 policy and your two $75,000 cars get hit at the same time, you’ll be covered for both up to a maximum of $200,000 instead of just $100,000.  To the best of my knowledge, attempting to collect on a stacked policy on a single car would violate state law.)

Me: I saw online it asked me for my most recent citation.  Progressive didn’t, why?
Him: We have special discounts for drivers who’ve received infractions citations.
Me: So… you reduce the rate for people who’ve got speeding tickets?
Him: Yes, people who get tickets tend to be safer drivers.

I dare say a cattle feces inspector has never encountered bullshit that large.  I went with Progressive.

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My current task is back to scanning until our new document system is running at 100% and my current docket is largely email correspondences between the document manager and the CAD worker who does the iterations of the drawings.  Today I found one of the gems that makes the job interesting.

Manager:  Please perform attached changes and increment the drawing revision as per (partinent standard).
CAD Worker:  The revisions are for a released item and can not receive a full incrementation from 3 to 4.
Manager:  Iterate the drawing to a partial level.  Assign release as 3.1.
CAD Worker:  Release level assigned as 3.1.
Manager: The requester discovered a spelling error in part (part name and number), please fix and iterate number to less that 3.2.
CAD Worker: Fixed.  I’ve iterated the drawing  to Ï€.
Manager: Non-repeating non-terminating numbers are not recognized as per (gov standard outlining CAD revisions of medical devices), for purposes of revisions, π will equal 3.14.

Well, glad someone laid down the law.  Somewhere a million geometry students are cheering.

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I’ve been running Engineering merit badge over the past few months for a troop and one requirement is to document power usage in your home for 10 devices, documenting its wattage and estimated monthly usage.  Below is listed one Scout’s device/wattage draw info.

Dryer – 100 watts
Nintendo Wii – 700 watts
Oven – 800 watts
Washing Machine – 4,000 watts
Lightbulb – 10,000 watts

Hm… My guess is that his dryer consists of a table fan and a CFL, his Wii is diesel powered, his washing machine is a jet turbine and he lives either in a lighthouse or at the top of the Luxor.  In any case, I’d love to see his woodchipper/blender and the Farraday cage he sleeps in so his fillings aren’t pulled out by the transformer for his 15,000 watt phone.

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I’ve been running Engineering merit badge over the past few months for a troop and one requirement is to document power usage in your home for 10 devices, documenting its wattage and estimated monthly usage.  Below is listed one Scout’s device/wattage draw info.

Dryer – 100 watts
Nintendo Wii – 700 watts
Oven – 800 watts
Washing Machine – 4,000 watts
Lightbulb – 10,000 watts

Hm… My guess is that his dryer consists of a table fan and a CFL, his Wii is diesel powered, his washing machine is a jet turbine and he lives either in a lighthouse or at the top of the Luxor.  In any case, I’d love to see his woodchipper/blender and the Farraday cage he sleeps in so his fillings aren’t pulled out by the transformer for his 15,000 watt phone.

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For tours, my workplace usually plays some animations of how our products work but due to one area being closed we had to replace it with something else.  Instead of said video, the blinds to the CAD area were opened so folk could peer in at the marvels of technology and design.  The person sitting next to the window opened up a drawing of our pouch and resumed his work.

Coworker 1: You can’t work on that!
Coworker 2: But this is what the work order is for.
Coworker 1: No no no.  Show them something good.
Coworker 2: Like what?
Coworker 1: Open one of the demo drawings that comes with the software like the 20 ton stonecrusher or the jet airplane wing.
Coworker 2: *opens plane wing* Now what do I do?
Coworker 1: Spin it, add a pouch to it, make sure it’s moving.  If it’s not spinning fast enough it’s not high tech.

By the time the tour came around, he had created a pinwheel out of airplane wings spinning at quite a healthy clip.  TECHNOLOGY, OOOOOOH.