Tuesday November 12, 2002 at 07:11 pm

The Late Post

With your host

Dj Mgyx

Oh the work I could be doing, yet feel no need to accomplish. I mean why should I?� It’s not like it will actually result in any type of benefit for me.� As you can tell today is somewhat a bitter day, it’s my 1 yr anniversary at work, and I’m still a temp, talk about shitty. Actually talk about what happens when you don’t kiss peoples asses, which ironically according to the department director was one of the key factors in hiring me on for this project. Anyway on with my once again late weekend posting, but this time it was a lil more justified. You know I think I’m going to simply title these Monday post “The Late Posts”, kind of like the late show, just with no guests, no freakish looking chins, and no Siamese twin juggling, blindfolded monkeys, with only 1 leg and one arm. Okay so that was a bit extreme but none the less true, but again on with the show.

Friday…

Boring day work was mundane as usual, with the exception of my staff committee meeting and the fact that my regular team got to in a since tell the developers of out application project, that they don’t know dick about what can be used and what actually works, and of course they have know intent on changing any part of it either. Amazing what happens when they say “So what do you guys think about the new application process?” and are bombarded with a barrage of “It sucks”, It’s a piss poor job”, “Who came up with this?”, and my favorite of all of them was “And, you thought this was a good idea, because of what again?” So needless to say by the end of year we’ll have to support a page we have no access to other than accessing badly cropped and out of focus screen shots from a makeshift manual thrown together 5 minutes before the meeting.

Then I get home in anticipation of receiving $200 of the $350 that our new roommate is supposed to be giving me for the purchase of my old AMD 450 system. I was anticipating this because he has been saying for the last week he’ll have $ for it on Friday. However he’s not home and has no intention on coming home until Sat, since he was staying the night at his girlfriends. So I figure okay kewl, I can’t buy anything right now so I’ll get from him on Sat when I get off work and then I can hit up Fry’s for some new parts.

Saturday…

Alas Saturday has come and I the 1^st conversation of the day blow up into an argument with Mike and I. Unusual? Not really, we haven’t pissed each other off enough in the last few weeks to warrant it, tell then at least. Originally we were going to build a guy a new system for $350, actually just gut his existing one and upgrade it, but when Mike picked up his old case he assumed a new one would be needed, since h had never seen a case that required a riser card. He didn’t explain that part to me at the time, and I discovered the issues on Sunday night, to say the least the argument was already over and done with by that time. Regressing to the argument, I told Mike that he need to get $25 to $50 in addition to the original $350 so we could buy a new case for the guy, as� was not about to give up another one of my own cases. Then the whole thing blew up into something to the effect that no matter what he says he’s getting for something it’s never enough, and that if I didn’t want a part of it, then I wasn’t going to get any $$$ out of it. Which to me I didn’t give a shit about to begin with, since it wasn’t going to be a massive job, like I’ve done for other people, this was for the most part a slight bit of a charity case, that when broken down to the $$$ per hr, was not worth the time and effort to really do. Granted the guy was giving us $350 the majority of it was being used to buy his own parts, thus in the end, that would have likely left $100 to split between Mike and I, and with having to now buy a case for him, it would have left likely $25.

All in all the project would have taken probably 3hrs to do, and that with the exception that everything was in working order, which in most cases it isn’t. In my opinion, it was too much work and effort to do for too little $$$, Mike’s view seemed to be some $$$ is better than no $$$, which is normally my view on things as well, accept for when I have options, I could spend 4-5 hrs building a system for maybe $50 or I could go to work and BS and watch movies for 3 hrs and make that same $50. My other issue, which really wasn’t an issue with the deal, but more how Mike priced the system, was the fact that the whole project was priced on assumption and not fact. And I say this simply because the last 2 weekends I have gone to Fry’s to purchase the same product and though advertised for $99, when all is said and done the end price usually ends up in the $150 range, due to additional items usually required for the combo pack to function, including fans, heat sinks. The price goes even higher if you have to purchase a certain speed RAM modules, not to say they usually rent; the same ones on sale, however it has been known to not work out in such convenience, either way your looking at more than $99 and tax, thus throwing the whole thing off. In the instance of having to purchase a new case, which is what Mike intended to due, the $29.99 case ends up costing close to $45 because of the items that it doesn’t come with that are required for it to used correctly, which of course is something you have to do when building a system for someone else, whom you want to be able to recommend others to your services. But since none of this was really conveyed during the heat of the argument, it did no good.

Ironically, when talked to Tom later that day, Tom agreed with my opinion, and that there was going to be way to much time and effort put into the system to warrant doing so for so little $$$. But would recommend Mike doing so on his own as a good learning experience, of building a system from nothing to a working system with OS installed and without errors or conflicts. The whole subject soon was forgotten when Tom showed me the footage of a house fire he taped earlier today from a neighbors balcony. The footage was pretty good, and I suggested calling one of the news stations to see if they wanted some additional footage of the tape, as there were no new crews present. For whatever reason Tom, didn’t want to call himself so I did and contacted our local ABC News Channel 5 office, it wasn’t our 1^st choice but none of the other had a Phone number on their websites to contact them. I spoke with one of the new coordinators who had no info on a fire that had happened and was more than willing to have a look at it, and if indeed it was good footage they would air it on the 10 o’clock news that evening.

So we headed out to the west side and finally arrived at their location some 20 miles away. Once there we were ushered in to their video production facilities and give a somewhat small mini tour. The coordinator was amazed that she didn’t hear anything about a house fire. There was a small issue of dubbing the video since the formats were slightly different, but was soon resolved. The crew all liked the video and decided to air it that evening. Tom recorded the actual aired piece but has yet to grab some screen captures for me, as well as some still from the raw footage, but when He does I’ll edit them in or post them on another day. Here’s the original footage.

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Since we were in the area by the news station we decided to go by the bigger Fry’s Electronics, where I picked up a new AMD Athlon XP 2000 and a newer ECS motherboard, and upgrade to the one running my AMD Duron 1.2 GHZ cpu, which was the cheapest combo available for the weekend at $129, and coming out to about $145 with other items needed. I also contemplated picking up a new case since Steve would be getting the last working case when he purchased the 450 system, but before that I decided to call and find out what was going on with $$$, and of course I knew before I called he wouldn’t have it, but I need to hear him say it. I finally got a hold him and the excuse that he didn’t have hardly any of the $$$ for the system, but that his mom would be giving him some $$$ to get it later in the week. Now if I were person I used to be, I would simply be kewl with that and let it go until next Friday, but since I’ve been screwed over before when it comes to these things, I’m not so lenient nowadays. Just like the movie Friday “Fuckin wit my money is like fuckin wit my emotions”. That’s when I decided I didn’t need to spend my own money on a case, when I had one in his room, so when I got home I took out the majority of the items he wasn’t going tog et anyway, including the 6 gig hard drive and replaced it with to 700 Mb hard drives, the Voodoo 2000 video card and 128 Mb stick of RAM. Needless to say he was a little shocked when He found the system gutted in pieces on the living room floor when he finally got home Sunday evening. I opted not to yank the case in general, because He would then be able to get out of paying 1/3 of the phone and DSL bill, and decided instead to buy a new case for the new board and processor since a power supply cost the same amount. So now he has till Wednesday to come up with some $$$ to recoup my investment or the system is getting yanked completely and sold on eBay, and replaced with some rinky dink 200 MHZ system, hell be able to surf the net and stuff just not as fast.

My new weekend resolution, never drink and go anywhere with your keys, because you are very likely to leave them there. Since nothing was going on Saturday night I decided to kick back a few Rum and Cokes while I worked on the systems. Then at about 1 or 2 am, Terri called, and got caught up with what was going on in each other lives. Unfortunately during this process I ran out of Coke and had to find away to acquire some more. Be the responsible person I am Driving was clearly out of the question even though AM/PM is only 200-300 yards away, besides that the way our street is situated by the time I drove there I could have walked there, so I opted to walk instead.

I knew something was going to happen with my keys when I was unable to unlock the gate and kept thinking not leave them in the key hole if the gate was jammed and I had to jump the wall, and I definitely knew something was going to happen when in fact the gate was jammed and I did have to hop the wall, but not then. I walked to the store got my coke and check out the early edition of the Sunday Fry’s ad. I got back to the apartment and promptly poured the new 20oz Vanilla Coke into the liter coke I was already drinking and remixed it with some more Captain Morgan’s Spiced Rum and headed back to my room, all the while still on the phone with Terri. Finally around 7am we decided to call it a night. Unfortunately by this time I didn’t want to do anything but throw something to block the street light from shining into my room, and not make sure I still had my wallet and keys which is what I normally do.

Sunday…

Sunday afternoon rolls around and Mike, informs me the guy we were building the system with is just going to buy a new system instead so he has no use of going to Fry’s Electronics, I on the other hand still have to go pick up a case or a power supply to get the new system up, and re-configure Steve’s temp system, but oddly enough I can’t locate my keys. Now before I’d be freaking out, but I’ve found that if I stop looking I’ll usually find them in someplace I’ve looked 30 times already and simply didn’t notice them, unfortunately this was not the case, I knew something happened to them but just couldn’t quite put my finger on what, so I went about my usual Sunday routine and watched the new Smallville. �Luckily I have a spare car key, and Tom called to see if I wanted to roll with him and Liz, as they were headed down there already. So we get back and I put my keys out of my head while I begin to put the new case and board together, next thing I know it’s 3am and I need a drink, so I go to get my keys and realize that I still have yet to find them, then it hits me this was the same time I walked to the store the night before and that they are likely there, A quick drive around the corner and sure enough they’re sitting behind the counter on a shelf. The mystery of the missing keys solved, good thing because I have no idea when I would have found the time to make new copies of everyone else. I got back and finished up the systems; Steve’s temp system running Windows 98 and mine running Windows XP, it would be a tragedy to see his system slowly deteriorate to something not even Kid would want to play with!