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8:33 AM - blackberry beeps. Voicemail at work. It's the customer I was trying to contact all week in CT regarding travel TOMORROW (that isn't booked).
8:34 AM - I return the call and work out the details. I do not need to go on the trip.
8:43 AM - I call my boss to give her the good and bad news. I proceed to do my morning blog reading, twittering, and all that.
9:20 AM - I click on my work label on my GMail and notice the voicemail from earlier (*click* mark read) and an email from one of the managers asking me to onboard patients before 10:00 this morning. I look at the clock and panic because I have about 7 onboarding items in JIRA.
9:20 AM - I log into the VPNs, open my SSH tunnels, fire up my query browser and begin updating records.
9:40 AM - I realize that contact lenses and showering are not going to happen because I'm still onboarding patients. At this point I realize I have a 10:00 pre-sale IT conference call, and I hate being late for pre-sale IT calls.
9:55 AM - I accidentally close the tab of a recalculating process. The process will keep running, but I won't know when it is finished. I give it 10 minutes while I run the other two (which I shouldn't do, but I'm running low on time!).
10:01 AM - I get an IM from my boss's boss asking if I'm coming in. This happened a few weeks ago where I got requests to do stuff before I'm normally in the office and I ended up deciding to work from home by default. I told him that I got an email requesting that I do some stuff and that I'd be in when I was finished around 10:30. As I'm typing this I realize that if I am going to put my contacts in, shower, and eat a proper breakfast, it'll be more like 11:15. Damn. No shower or contacts for me.
10:03 AM - I give my teeth a quick brush and throw on some clothes.
10:05 AM - I make the pre-sale IT call. The guy "just stepped out of the office". I leave a voicemail.
10:06 AM - I finish the last of the recalculations and send an IM off to the manager that requested them.
10:18 AM - I inhale a bowl of cereal.
10:35 AM - I arrive at work and log into my computer, terminal, and VMs.
10:46 AM - I call the pre-sale IT guy back and have my conference call.
11:00 AM - I hang up the phone and type a quick email to the pre-sale guy's boss and our sales guy giving the thumbs up.
11:05 AM - I send the pre-sale IT guy materials from the call.
11:10 AM - I find the boss's boss who was looking for me and answer a couple questions about an existing customer.
11:15 AM - I begin this blog post.
It kinda feels like I didn't do much, but I feel like I've been running around all morning. Well, not literally because most of this happened while seated, but I've been in a sort-of panic since 9:20.
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Comments: Read 1 or Add Your Own.
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Ok lazyweb... help me out here. What is this bug? It's not an ant.
I've been killing bugs on an average of one per day since we moved in. Most have been stink bugs, but I've also killed a a few flies, a hornet, a small ant, a HUGE ant, and this guy... whatever he is. Oh and a few unwelcome spiders. (I've left a few welcome spiders in their place.)
I hate bugs.
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Comments: Read 2 or Add Your Own.
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So...
We got this new washer and dryer. They're great, but there's a few things that are just a little weird. Everything is working properly and all, but like... the dryer takes less time than the washer. Part of that is because the washer has a very effective spin cycle, and the other part is the efficiency of the dryer. I just find it bizzare. I'm accustomed to the washer taking about 30 minutes and the dryer taking about 45. However, this washer takes an hour on average and the dryer can take anywhere from 20 minutes to 50. It's supposed to take longer, but it always ticks down the timer more quickly than its initial estimate, likely because the washer has spun out so much water.
Previously, I used to say that if money, space, and utility hookups weren't limiting factors, I'd get a washer and two dryers. Now I want two washers because this dryer is definitely staying ahead of the washer by leaps and bounds. I can't really complain because even with nice-smelling detergent, my clothes are coming out smelling like barely anything. Yeah. The rinse is just that good, and somehow this thing only uses about 1/3 of the water of a regular machine. *boggle*
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Comments: Read 7 or Add Your Own.
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I finally got a picture of my absolute favorite Pittsburgh road sign. There's another one out in Robinson Township that I want to try to get that directs people to downtown, the airport, and Moon Township that is also photographed a lot.
This one, though, is at the intersection of S Braddock Ave, Edgewood Ave, and Waverly St. S Braddock and Edgewood meet at a Y where Edgewood is one of the branches of the Y and S Braddock is the rest. Waverly St is the right turn, S Braddock is the slight left, Edgewood is the U-turn left, and there really isn't a street where the regular left is, just a parking lot for an Arby's and a CoGo's.
I find it a little disappointing that one cannot make the same U-turn going the other way from Edgewood to S Braddock. However, I find it easier to go the other way on Edgewood and take Race St to Swissvale Ave, but that's not really relevant to this post.
Incidentally, Google Maps has the end of Edgewood Ave mislabeled as "Braddock Ave" (without the S/South).
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Wednesday, May 13th, 2009
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So if you're not friends with Mark and you don't follow me on Facebook or Twitter, you probably don't know that I've moved again. On my last computer, if I'd start to type "livejouranl" in the address bar on Firefox, the post page would be in the list of URLs that drops down. Now, not so much. I need to post more. Anyway, Mark and I are renting a house in Edgewood, PA, which is just outside of Pittsburgh city limits. We're still "in Pittsburgh" though because Pittsburgh is right there *points*.
We took the entire last week to move. Mark did most of the work by taking boxes back and forth during the day while I was at work, though we shared most of the actual heavy lifting. This past Saturday we rented a truck to get the big stuff. There wasn't much at that point. I think the only things that were in the truck were the couch, the mattress, the kitchen table and chairs, my chest of drawers, and our desk chairs. Oh, and the file cabinet.
We couldn't get the foundation for the mattress up the stairs, so we ended up going to Ikea and buying a Malm since it can be used with slats to avoid the need for a foundation. I like having an actual headboard on the bed, but I'm nervous because we haven't yet "tested" how sturdy the frame is.
Anyway, we're still getting organized. There are piles of boxes here and there that either need to be unpacked or broken down. Progress is going quickly but it seems slow. There are things we should have done before we moved anything, like clean each room from top to bottom, but we're managing to make it work. I can't wait until it's all done.
Oh, and it only takes me 7 minutes to drive to work (garage to parking lot). Yay!
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Comments: Read 2 or Add Your Own.
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Thursday, April 16th, 2009
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So on the way to work this morning, I saw a guy on a bike whiz by me while I was stopped at a red light. I was like, dude... obnoxious and unsafe! Then the guy on the bike stopped a few cars ahead and screamed at this contractor driving a cargo van. Apparently the guy in the van cut off the guy on the bike.
Now, people in cars/vans/trucks need to watch for bikes, but people on bikes need to watch out for themselves too. The guy was driving a cargo van with no windows. He only has two tiny mirrors on each side to figure out what's behind him and he has a HUGE blind spot. The guy on the bike is thin. The widest thing on him was his helmet, so he wasn't exactly standing out very much either.
So the moral of the story is that the guy on the bike needs to relax just a bit and not take it personally that the guy in the big cargo van cut him off. Maybe he wasn't watching as well as he should have been, but on the other hand, maybe... just MAYBE it might have been IMPOSSIBLE for him to see the guy on the bike.
Kthxbye.
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Comments: Read 4 or Add Your Own.
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I emailed the sales guy asking him about Monday. I have no idea what to expect:
John:
How dressed up should I be on Monday? Would you like me to wear a jacket and tie or will khakis and a dress shirt suffice? Let me know.
Thanks,
- Matt His reply amused me so much, I have to put it here:I will be in full blown sales gear - suit and tie. However you are Technical and as such headsets, laptops, energy drinks and other important techy stuff are fine. Kakis and shirt.
Hope your holiday has been wonderful. I will have at least two follow ups I will need help with, we can discuss next week. john
This makes me really want to geek myself out with a bluetooth headset, iPod, Code Red Mountain Dew and a heavily "accessorized" laptop. However, I can't do the "crunchy" spiky hair that I also envision since I have no hair. Anyway, I'm both looking forward to it and dreading it at the same time, since I'll have no time for fun on this trip.
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I'm not sure how vocal I've been about this via twitter or Facebook, but I've recently had a series of shoe malfunctions leading to what's pictured here.
It started out with the massive red blister near my left big toe. I wore my old gym shoes (which I thought still had some life in them) when I went for a walk two weeks ago. I got a massive blister, which was fine for a day, and then after a workout at the gym, it turned dark and got funky. It's healing up, but it's kinda gross.
So, the next week, I decided to wear a newer pair of shoes, which I thought were actually marketed as walking shoes. Well, the back of these shoes used to rub at the top and blister (or worse), which is exactly what happened to my left foot. I thought the little sticky pads that I bought had solved this, but apparently not.
Well, what was actually worse was this was that the same pair of shoes totally blistered up and ripped off a section of my right foot below the ankle on the inside. You can see the "duct tape bandage" wrapped around the back.
So, my left foot is basically okay now, except that the first blister is kinda sore. The wound on my right foot is super sensitive, though it's heeling somewhat quickly considering that the added thickness of a bandaid causes every pair of shoes rubs on that spot.
Anyway... so the reason that I bring this up is that last night, someone tagged this picture of my bandaged up feet as a "favorite' on Flickr. I thought that was kinda strange until I looked at the person's profile and found that they have a bunch of pics of blistered and bandaged men's feet. Plus, the person was a member of some groups that were clearly fetish groups. Now, I should be the last person to judge a person's fetishes, but that's pretty damned weird. Foot fetishes are weird enough, but blistered and bandaged feet?! Oh well, I guess I'm flattered that my feet "made the cut".
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Comments: Read 3 or Add Your Own.
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Why are non-twitter fans so vocal and strongly opinionated about it?
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Comments: Read 11 or Add Your Own.
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I'll be in Houston on April 15. I think the sales guy intends on going out for dinner on the CEO's dime, but I should have a little free time.
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Comments: Read 6 or Add Your Own.
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Tuesday, March 31st, 2009
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It's amazing how much the Internet is blurring the lines of geography. It's also amazing that I didn't realize how much I liked Rover's Morning Glory until I realized I can listen to it on my way to work by streaming it to my blackberry! It's really cool. I can listen to stations from a few dozen cities. (including 100.7 WMMS from Cleveland!) So yesterday morning I caught Rover on the tail end of my commute. This morning I turned it on when I got in the car. My commute isn't very long, but it was kinda cool to listen to the station I used to listen to when I would drive to the University.
Anyway... time to get some work done...
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Wednesday, March 25th, 2009
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In the past, I've had this weird thing happen where I see the wrong icon on Mark's posts. It has happened on both of my computers, and it's the same icon. The solution is to clear my cache and refresh my friends' page. No big deal. It's usually a few days before I notice it and correct it. (Also, Mark doesn't post much these days compared to some of my other friends.) Actually, the way I noticed it was by asking him why he changed his icon and who the dude in the picture was.
Fast forward to this morning. The same thing has happened except with MY icon. I've cleared my cache and refreshed and I'm still getting the same icon. This one is kinda like the "LOOK LOOK! ANIMATED GIF!" icon that I used to use, except worse. It kinda gave me a headache -- so I kinda understand why everyone thought it was so annoying back when I used it occasionally (though... that was the point).
Anyway... I'm thinking there must be a corrupt icon database somewhere that occasionally gets thrown into the rotation or something. It's kinda annoying, especially now that at the top of every page, I see this flashing icon whether I want to or not. *sigh* Karma 5 years later.
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Comments: Read 4 or Add Your Own.
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Tuesday, March 10th, 2009
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I just posted a comment and then all of the sudden, I can't read my friends page anymore. WTF??
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Monday, February 23rd, 2009
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FUCK!
The more careful I am, the more I screw up. I just did an UPDATE ... INNER JOIN without an ON clause!
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Comments: Read 2 or Add Your Own.
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Monday, February 9th, 2009
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Dear Internet:
I would like to find an application for my Blackberry (Storm) that would allow me to set points on a map and buzz me when I'm passing them. For example, I was supposed to pick up my prescription at the Walgreens at Penn and Braddock on my way home from work. I forgot until I was a block from home, and I had to turn around and drive halfway back to work to stop at Walgreens. (I would have waited until tomorrow if I wasn't completely out of both meds.) If I had such an app where I could program in an address, intersection, or even just point to a place on a map and say if I'm within .25 mile from the point to alert me. I'm sure this is possible because I have an app called Trapster that does something similar for speed traps and automated speed and traffic light enforcement. (I was even playing with it on my way home from work!) Does anyone know of such a functionality?
Bonus points if Google rolls this into the next version of Google Maps for Blackberry.
Sincerely,
- Matt
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Comments: Read 1 or Add Your Own.
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Sunday, February 8th, 2009
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Saturday, January 10th, 2009
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So, this week I've been on a kick of changing around a lot of stuff in the apartment. We rearranged furniture several weeks ago, and a lot of this changed things like the placement of TVs and phones.
Part of this was triggered by an important discovery about our apartment: the location of the apartment's cable splitter. I'm not sure what we were doing, but I found a panel in the closet that has all of the phone cables and coax for the entire apartment. Only the cables that were hooked up were terminated, so I went out and got a compression crimper.
The first thing I did was wire up the cable jack that is on the same side of the living room as the TV. So, now we don't have that coax cable running up the corner, across the doorway, and down the opposite corner. However, a speaker cable has replaced it so ...
Moving on, after I got the new TV last weekend ... Oh, by the way, I got a new TV last weekend ... I decided to get a second cable box for it, move the old TV and cable box to the bedroom, and move the old bedroom TV to the kitchen. Because of the layout of our rooms, I could see Mark wanting to have the same thing on in both the kitchen and living room. If he turned them on to the same channel, there'd be a delay on the new TV because of the cable box. Instead, I went back to the panel in the closet. We have the old dual-coax style wiring from the days when digital cable required two coax connections (now it only requires one). I wired the second coax to the RF-out on the new cable box (the TV is connected via HDMI). I connected the other end of the second coax to one of the coaxes that goes to the kitchen, and now the two TVs are in sync!
Fast forward to this evening. A little background information first: The bedroom TV and phone are connected by a coax and a cat-3 cable that run around the corner alongside a cat-5 cable from the days when Mark's desk was in what is now the bedroom. The door to the bedroom pinches the cables when the door is closed. (I usually step on the cable to force it under the door instead of inside the hinge, but I'm not always the one closing the door.) Oh, and one more thing. When I discovered the panel in the closet with the cables, I found an extra one. There was the source cable, the two for the living room, the one for the kitchen, the one for the bedroom, and one more. I looked all over for the extra one, but couldn't find it. We'll get back to that in a minute.
This afternoon, Mark was watching TV in the bedroom and getting massive interference on a few of the digital channels. I tried resetting the cable box and even having a reinitialization signal sent from Comcast (thankfully they have a self-service tool to do this with a touch-tone phone). I finally decided to carry the TV and cable box around the corner and connect them with a smaller cable to the splitter in the bedroom. Everything worked flawlessly. Naturally I figured the cable must have gotten damaged from being pinched in the door.
I decided that I was going to drill a hole in the wall and feed a cable through, but when I looked in the wall, I discovered there was another pair of coaxes in close proximity to the ones for the bedroom. There was another set in the wall for the other bedroom! After more looking, I discovered that there was even a metal frame to screw the wall plate into. The only thing lacking was the actual hole in the wall for all of this to go through! The mystery of the fifth cable is solved!
I cut a hole in the wall and got a spare wall plate leftover from a previous project. I also threaded a cat-3 through the wall for the phone. I was tempted to wire up jacks there, but I figured it probably wasn't worth it. Plus, the way I'd wire it all up, it'd confuse the next tenant in this apartment, and I'm sure the maintenance guy wouldn't have a clue either.
So... now there are no wires running around the doorway. Now, if there was only pull-twine along with the cables so that I could pull a cat-5 from the bedroom to the living room and a speaker wire through the wall instead of clipped to the ceiling...
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Friday, January 2nd, 2009
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As with many things, I'm always looking for a better MySQL client/query browser/query analyzer. I started using the official MySQL Query Browser when I first started with medSage, but one of my coworkers turned me on to SQLyog. I really like SQLyog, but the newest version is nagware. There are things I like and dislike about both programs. Specifically, I like how MySQL Query Browser highlights the "current" statement and seems to act more logically if you have the cursor just beyond the semicolon for a statement and you tell it to execute the current statement. SQLyog will throw an error in that situation telling you that there is no current statement.
However, the biggest thing that has drawn me to SQLyog is the ability to import CSV files. In writing this post, I did a little Google search and discovered the mysqlimport command line utility. SQLyog's functionality is just a front end for the command-line tool, so suddenly I'm less impressed.
I've also been told that MySQL query browser executes each statement in its own session to the server whereas SQLyog maintains a session. (So temporary tables, theoretically, would disappear after the statement finishes execution in MySQL Query Browser but not SQLyog.) I did a quick test of this and found that temporary tables do persist with MySQL Query Browser, so apparently that's bunk.
Perhaps my reliance on SQLyog over the past months was for the wrong reasons. Yeah, I did enjoy that it can copy tables between databases (even across servers), but I found this to be a little buggy and using mysqldump to do this was more reliable.
Originally, this post was a call to ask if anyone had any recommendations of a good query browser, but now I realize that MySQL's own paired with the command line tools is probably my best choice for now. However, if anyone has any recommendations (for Windows or Linux), feel free to recommend away.
Also, as if GoFastPass at the Pittsburgh Airport wasn't awesome enough, if you use your EZ Pass transponder instead of the one they give you, it's even awesomer! Kris has to all but wave her transponder out the window to get in and out of the parking lot. I just drive up without thinking about it (her transponder also isn't stuck to her window line my EZ Pass).
Now, they just need a type of EZ Pass for travelers so that you can take their own with them...
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Thursday, December 25th, 2008
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Quickly ... before it's over ...
Merry Christmas!
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31337zeke's journal
