From Within the Cube Walls

My day job is IT Geek for a Very Large Corporation. There are pluses and minuses that go with that territory. On one hand, I get to work on some pretty cool projects and people assume I know what I'm talking about since I'm old (in IT years). On the minus side, I get invited to a lot of meetings - most of them conference calls that go on way too long.

Oftentimes, I don't really need to be sitting on those calls. I'm just there because some MBA-type feels better knowing there's a Geek on standby to settle disputes involving Star Wars trivia (this has yet to happen). To pass the time, I often make my own fun by chatting online with Peer Geeks. In the interest of full-disclosure, 'on-line' really means 'inside our corporate network'.

As as exercise in 'you are there', I thought I'd lift the veil of corporate intrigue and post a snippet of one of these sanity saving exchanges. I can't believe I get paid for being this stupid-lame. This is all real, with only the names changed to protect the IT Geek image. Enjoy!

Other Geek [9:04 AM]:

I was forced to switch to Firefox last night.

I feel dirty

Me Being Bored [9:04 AM]:

Welcome, brother. You are safe here.

Other Geek [9:09 AM]:

Here's the deal. XP told me there were updates (including the optional update to IE8). Foolishly, I went for it. I then went to miniclip to play pool and it failed. I was angered. I went back to the checkpoint it wrote before installing everything and it corrupted registry. I went back to the previous checkpoint and all was cool, but the banners were gone from my IE 7 browser. I could not get them back. I tried to download the install from MS. I could not download anything. I went to another PC, downloaded firefox. Installed it on my problem PC and it worked. so I uninstalled IE7. re-installed it and it works. However, I left Firefox as my browser of choice. The funny thing is that the miniclip game still does not work - on any PC i have. It had nothing to do with the browser.

not banners......toolbars

I lost my toolbars in IE7

Me Being Bored [9:09 AM]:

Firefox rox

Other Geek [9:11 AM]:

it's the same. It looks the same as IE7/8. It runs the same, it inherited my tab preferences (IE7 has tabs), my favorites, my homepage, my cookies, everything. I would bet that Kid and Wife don't even notice.

Opera rox

Me Being Bored [9:12 AM]:

I use Safari on my iPod

Other Geek [9:13 AM]:

It's no Opera. There are hacks to make it work on Apple TV.

Me Being Bored [9:14 AM]:

Hacking Apple hardware is a mug's game, I think.

Other Geek [9:16 AM]:

It's more mainstream than that, I think. http://www.atvflash.com/

imagine - Google earth on Apple TV.

Me Being Bored [9:16 AM]:

that would be pretty cool

Other Geek [9:18 AM]:

In fact, on Apple TV, Google Earth is LIVE. The images are delivered in REAL TIME. Cars driving down the road. bombs going off in Foreign Countries. You know, all laughing aside - that's not beyond the realm of possibilities.

Me Being Bored [9:18 AM]:

whoa! I saw that on CSI

Other Geek [9:19 AM]:

No, that was using a black light to find fingerprints.

Or maybe you're thinking of how they flick at a piece of dangling flesh for dramatic effect.

Me Being Bored [9:26 AM]:

No, no - it was fingerprints. Matlock was sure the culprit's fingerprints were in a backyard but McGruber couldn’t figure out how to melt the lock to get into that backyard so Quirky Genius Geek Goth Girl commandeered a Google Earth satellite and they zoomed into the backyard and found the fingerprints with 2 MINUTES LEFT in the episode. And then they all took their sunglasses off and wore them in cool affected poses while the credits rolled - inexplicably over a racing speedboat that had nothing to do with the story.

Other Geek [9:26 AM]:

I love it when a plan comes together !

I pitty da fool

Me Being Bored [9:27 AM]:

Book 'em Dano

Other Geek [9:27 AM]:

Holy crap..... they enabled this a couple of years ago and I didn't know....... http://googlesightseeing.com/2007/04/01/live-satellite-images-in-google-earth/

Bizzaro World

Don't ask me how I found a video involving Amanda Palmer, her underwear, a ukelele, Neil Gaiman, his laptop, and dark intimations of his Scientology ties - but I did.

Shadows Across My Face

The Middle of the story can be summed up quite easily: David S. became my very first really-and-truly Facebook Friend yesterday. It was a lovely surprise - almost too lovely. At the heart of it beats a simple truth that all of us (really) find some amount of validation in being noticed. And that's all there was to it - the pleasure of being noticed and acknowledged without ever expecting it. I think that might be at the core of the Facebook phenomenon. Maybe.

Beginning and End can now be told.

In the Beginning, I created a Facebook account to just annoy the Hell out of my 16 year-old daughter, BandGeek. I have teased her pretty consistently about her massive circle of Facebook Friends and how that whole world seemed to be a little short on content or substance. They Tag and they Poke and they write on each other's Wall - and I marvel at it just a bit.

To grok this meme, she suggested I create my own account, and she went so far as to add me as her Friend. Several minutes later, she removed me as her Friend. Parents, I'm told, should not really 'social network' with their kids. Bad things can happen. Information can go astray. Her advice: maybe find some Friends more my own age.

So my account sat there unloved, unused, Friend-less. I hadn't made much of an effort to seek out anyone on my own. And then Middle came along, and you know that part of the tale.

In the End - which is not really the end but just what I was doing a few minutes ago - I decided to poke around a bit inside the Facebook world. I kind of get the drift of things, I suppose: commenting, following others, just sort of keeping in touch in a multi-casting kind of way.

I started to search around for people I knew (or used to know). That's the true power of Facebook: making connections across geography and time. I found a few people I knew from school, and that was pretty cool. There were names I hadn't thought about in years. There were some names that were familiar somehow, and yet not.

And then I ran across Her - an old flame from my college days. She had a picture posted, and it punched me in the gut without the barest hint of "Look out, stupid!". I haven't been in touch with Her in more than 20 years, but the power of encountering someone from the past - someone that resonated - is pretty powerful stuff, indeed. No, this isn't middle-age crisis territory. Rather, I think it's just a new path for some old memories to claw their way to consciousness - a shortcut heretofore unknown.

So, yes, the End of the story seems to be about ghosts and what to do with them. I may reach out to some of these spectres - give them form and substance by shining a bit of light on them. Others will probably remain as wispy memories, worth a smile and nothing more.

My Sonic Roadmap

So I've had this little side-project going in fits and starts since last September to digitize all of our recorded music. I'm not sure of the precise rationale for doing this other than it seems like a good thing to rip all of our unused, unloved cassettes and vinyl to something a little more convenient for these modern times. Dee and the kids are iPod afficionados and it seemed reasonable that they would appreciate having all our great old music in a more iTunes-friendly format.

So for the past 4 months I've had the guts of our stereo plugged into the back of our PC as I've beavered away at this tedious task. I decided to tackle the cassette tapes first. Many of these tapes are close to 30 years old(!!). One - The Mamas and the Papas - is closer to 40 years and belonged to my parents when cassettes were on the cutting edge of audio tech.

It's been an unexpectedly poignant experience - memories that have not seen much daylight in so long. I've seen some childhood, my first car (a very used Firebird Esprit), an old friend's cigarette-burned couch, a spontaneous dance in front of the Western Fair bandshell, my embarrassing early-80's proto-punk harcut, a make-out session with my soon-to-be (much) Better Half - all pieces of Me brought into musical form and shape.

It's been a good time.

As I type these words, the final tape - tape #110 - is unwinding it's dusty secrets into the digital world. The tape: Steve Martin - A Wild and Crazy Guy. I haven't listened to it in many, many years, but I nearly wore it out when it was new. It was a gift expressly from my Dad on my 16th birthday. On occasions that demanded gifts, the selection duties were always left to Mom. But 16 was something different in my Dad's eyes, and he knew I loved Steve Martin. The fact that the tape had a bit of bad language was an added bonus. It was Dad's way of saying, "You've arrived, Son. You can be your own man, now.". It was good day, back in our house on Calgary Street.

All that from a little plastic ribbon. And upstairs, on a long shelf, are many more old LPs waiting to tell their stories, too. I can already hear their dusty voices.

Furry London

So off we went to our first cat show this weekend hosted by Pawsitive Paws Cat Club. Given Dee's allergies for most things furry and four-legged, we'd never dared to set foot inside such an event before. As it was JediBoy's birthday (one more teenager emerges from his pod) and this was a Formal Birthday Request, Dee popped some over-the-counter drugs and off we went to puruse the felines at the Carling Heights community center.

I'm not sure what I expected, but it was fun in a setting-foot-on-a-new-planet kind of way. While a bit on the small side, there were dozens and dozens of cats being shuffled about 4 or 5 judging rings. It was obvious that many of the cats were veterans of the Cat Show Circuit - judging from their bored expressions and lack of discernable bone structure as their officious-looking owners carried them to wherever they needed to be.

There were a few of us rubbernecker types trudging up and down the aisles, checking out the hoipoloi of the cat world. But the majority in attendance were serious about these things. The fans tended to be on the elderly side while the breeders tended towards middle-aged couples. In all, the whole vibe was reminiscent of gathering of CB-radio enthusiasts I attended with my cousin way back in the late 70's - normal people with abnormal fixations on a hobby-cum-lifestyle. It was all very charming, actually.

And did I mention they were serious? The judging rings mystified me in the way that polo and cricket mystify me. I get the point of everything, just not the rules. All the same, it was cool to watch - the people moreso than the cats.

The only disappointment was the sparse number of cat breeds. While there was the odd Sphinx (weird) and Maine Coon (huge), the majority of cat-thletes were Persians - a lovely cat for sure, but one eventually gets tired of their flat faces and anxiously-bored expressions. And nowhere did we spy any Siberians - a breed dear to our own household.

And at that, I open the floor to comments on feline slang nomenclature and its overlap with human anatomy colloquialisms.