RCNevada

My partner in crime and I have spent the last couple of days setting up permanent VPNs between our offices; a simple enough job that is already giving me a migraine.

This relatively easy task wouldn’t be nearly as much of a PITA if we didn’t have to sit in front of every computer in every office and be reminded that our employees spend a butt-load of time and effort trying to cripple the network by going wherever they damn well please, doing whatever they damn well please, downloading all kinds of new and interesting crude -mostly by opening the “someone said something bad about you” links in their email- and then getting away with denying that it was them. –Don’t ask me to explain how that last bit works, just ask any sysadmin who’s been doing it a while.

Then tomorrow we get the pleasure of tracing cables in one of our buildings. It used to be a bank building so there are bunches of small offices with at least three Ethernet and two phone lines running to each of them.

I “think” the lines all run into the room that once held the server, but I wouldn’t bet on it because our luck has never been that good. If they do then it’s just three or four hours worth of work tracing and labeling. If they don’t; we get to figure out what conduit goes where and hope there’s enough room to pull more cable. And if that fails we resort to plan “B” which is to crawl around in the dirty, bug and roof rat infested attic of a building that was built with firebreaks, reinforced ceilings and concrete walls, running more conduit. –I’m not only getting too damn old for this shit, at 6’4″ and 270lb I’m just not built for tight spaces.

Which reminds me. I’ve started exercising and I don’t know who first said exercise was good for you but they lied. Think about it, exercise causes pain and pain is your body’s way of telling you that you’re hurting yourself. So who am I going to believe, my body, or some guy trying to sell me a gym membership?

In my spare time I’ve been working on a new website which would be simple enough, providing the art work was ready, the overall design was agreed on and certain people didn’t change their minds every 32 1/2 seconds.

According to them, they never change their minds. They “re-analyze” the business model based on the latest trends with an eye towards “web placement” and “advertizing potential.” –Translation: they overheard someone say that they heard somebody say that this is the latest trend in web design as proposed by a drunken truck driver in a roadside bar in some obscure corner of Spotsylvania.

As far as “Web placement” goes they haven’t a clue, instead they rely on me. Yesserie Bob, that’s first person singular, an army of one. Good web placement is doable, but only if they quit changing the entire project every 32 1/2 seconds. –Oh, am I repeating myself?

But my favorite phrase is “advertizing potential.” Having an advertizing budget and spending money to make money… How terribly quaint. Why not just have a website that people are going to miraculously find by the thousands and which will be so entrancing that it will cause this ever growing multitude to descend on the as yet unbuilt brick and mortar location with pockets full of hundred dollar bills and no concept of the value of anything. Or are these massive hordes of people with pockets full of hundred dollar bills supposed to be rushing to the website to buy advertizing space. I’m really not sure.

I’m just hanging on for dear life and watching the world go round. Kind of like a bull rider who knows he’s about to wind up with a mouth full of rodeo dirt.