Friday Challenge: Tech Support

“Excuse me young man?”

Oh great. Just about to level up, now this. I finally get a 15 minute stretch of zombie killing, mindless fun, and grandma has to bring me back to reality.

“Young man, I was told that you’re tech support?”

I wish people would quit telling people things about me. Even if they’re true.

“Yes, I’m tech support. What can I do for you?”

I managed to pull that off without sounding too insincere.

“It’s my husband. He’s having a little trouble.”

He’s sitting in one of the big comfy chairs. Must have gotten here pretty early to score that. Came in for the updates. Typical Tuesday.

“Ma’am, he has the Blue Eyes of Death. You have to reboot him.”

From this angle I can even see the tiny white-on-blue error message. There he is, near catatonic, and all Microsoft can do is tell him to remove any recently installed hardware or software. Looks like most of his recent hardware is keeping him alive. Let’s hope it’s a software fix.

“Oh, he doesn’t like it when I reboot his system. He never thinks I’m doing it right. Do you think you could do it for me?”

Oh, I can. But I’ll have to get up, make my presence known. On a Tuesday.

“OK, I’ll do it this time, but I’m really not supposed to touch the customers, you know.”

I walk over, grateful that the old-timers hardly ever get sub-dermal switches. I find his switch, just behind his right ear, press and hold for three seconds and I’m done. His eye flickers and his chest rises in a sigh of relief. I remember now that I’ve seen him here before. Rebooted him then too. Told him he needed to close some open ports. Don’t turn on automatic updates for every app you put in your brain. And stop surfing porn. That stuff can kill you these days.

“Oh, thank you, he’s looking better already.”

I accept her thanks and walk away before he can speak. On my way back to my table I perform a quick scan of his system. Cleaned out a couple of worms, closed some ports and installed a backdoor of my own, just in case.

I detour to the counter and grab some coffee. One of the perks of working tech support at Starbucks – all the coffee you can drink. Also one of the drawbacks.

Coffee in hand I turn around and stood face to face with Barrister Musa Issah. Today he’s wearing a white linen suit. Yesterday it was a blue one. The red one’s my favorite.

Before I can delete, he’s talking. He was the solicitor for the late Sanni Abacha, President of Nigeria. He has been given my name as a trustworthy person. He would like me to assist him in getting a gazillion dollars out of Nigeria and into the hands of the rightful heirs of Mr. Abacha.

His accent is much smoother this time. And the woman crying in the background is new. Almost touching. Delete.

My table is no longer available. Some guy’s sitting there with an antique Macbook Air. I hear they were pretty cool, for externals. But I don’t have time to admire it. I want to find a place to disappear and avoid the Tuesday madness.

“Can you help me log on?”

Great, another noob.

“You just wink on the Starbucks logo”

Ever since implants first became popular, the municipal grid has been overloaded. They say free wifi hotspots were popular around the turn of the century. With all the grid congestion, they’ve made a comeback. Especially on Tuesdays.

“I don’t see the logo the girl at the counter said just look left but I don’t see anything and I’ve looked all over the store could you just show me where it is?”

It was a great idea, really. Plug a cable straight into the occipital lobe, and voila, internal video. Of course if you wanted to get data into the machine, you had to be more daring. The very early adopters were lobotomized.

“Keep your head still, ma’am, and look left. No, just move your eyes. Okay now look up. You should see the logo. OK, double wink on it.”

But eventually the technology caught up. Processors continued to get faster. People started using the implant to control the autonomic functions of their brains. It freed up gray matter for other uses. A couple of Nobel Prize winners were found to have done it, suddenly everybody else thinks it’ll make them Nobel material.

“No, ma’am, just two quick winks. Just your left eye.”

Then the quantum chips hit the consumer implant market. It was actually feasible to let the implant take full control, as long as you kept it updated. You did not want buggy code in charge of your brain.

And there was the rub. After a while, who would notice the buggy code. If everyone’s performance downgraded simultaneously, and all in proportion, who would notice?

Well, I would - every Tuesday. Every Tuesday the updates come down from Microsoft. And every Tuesday, my coffee shop fills up with people waiting to get their updates. And every Tuesday people get a little bit weirder.

First it was just quirky behavior. Like everybody ordering the same espresso drink and asking for an umbrella. Or when people began to hunt and peck at their virtual keys. They’re virtual, there’s nothing to hunt.

Everyone stopped wearing shoes two weeks ago.

After last Tuesday’s update, three men went into the street and killed a dog. The whole shop applauded. And everyone joined in when they started eating.

Now the patrons don’t react to anything. Except for me. They always notice me. Especially when I try to leave. I’ve been in the coffee shop for a week now. Even if they let me leave, I’m not sure where I’d go.

It’s noon. Time for the updates.

Straighten up and fly right

At work today, our network connection went down, so several people gathered in the test lab (where I work) to talk. Somehow the story turned to animals and pets. A coworker from India told about being stalked by packs of street dogs.

Then he told about a friend who had all types of animals - dogs, cats, and a monkey. He trained the monkey to give head massages. It would sit on your shoulder and rub your head. He said he actually experienced it himself - he had a headache and his friend suggested a head massage might help. So he called over the monkey, it sat on his shoulders and massaged his head. But he did give one word of warning (direct quote): When a monkey gives a head massage, if you turn you r head one way or the other, the monkey will beat on your head. You must look perfectly straight ahead."

So now you know the monkey massage protocol.

Two Killings

There were two recent incidents in which a single killer took the lives of several other people. In one case, the killer survived, in the other the perpetrator was killed during the incident.

In the first incident, the killer committed an illegal act, taking the lives of 5 innocent people and injuring many more before taking his own life.


In the second incident an innocent person was in the midst of a legal activity and killed 8 people involved in an illegal one.

A driver in Baltimore Maryland came upon a group of people that had entered a highway to watch an illegal drag race. Smoke from the tires and an early morning haze prevented the driver from seeing the crowd until it was too late.

The innocent victims of the Northern Illinois University were in the middle of what society tells us is the ultimate in safety - a gun-free zone. And it is safe, as long as everyone follows society's rules and does not attempt to harm their fellow man. However,

2.2 million people are currently in prison in the United States for some violation of society's rules, so we know that not everyone is a follower. And armed with this basic knowledge of human nature, our culture's response is to deprive the innocent majority of their true path to safety - the ability to defend themselves.

The right to bear arms is simply that - a right. Tell Americans that you are going to take away the privilege of driving (it is not a right) and there will be uproar. But those of us who believe in the 2nd Amendment are supposed to quietly accept a reduction in liberty.

Ron Paul

Ultimate 2008 Presidential Candidate Matcher Your Result: Ron Paul   Ron Paul is known as the libertarian candidate. He opposes the Iraq war, and is conservative on social issues like abortion and gay civil unions. Paul wants to reduce regulations on healthcare, pursue nuclear energy, and reduce taxes. He opposes citizenship for illegal immigrants, and would get rid of the Patriot Act and the Dept. of Homeland Security.
Mitt Romney
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John McCain
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Just took the quiz.
I've been debating whether to register as a republican so I can vote in the primary. Not sure they'd let me in with my unaffiliated card.

Meet Sandy, my new personal assistant

I just learned about Sandy from 43 Folders and decided to give her a shot as my new personal assistant. She won't take dictation or bring me coffee, but she will keep track of my calendar and remind me of things that I need to do.
I send her an email at a special address, tell her something like "Sandy, remind me to check the Peterson account when I get back to LA on Friday." (I type that with my best Thurston Howell III accent) and on Friday at 7:00 am, Sandy will send an email reminder to check the Peterson account.
Check her out at http://www.iwantsandy.com.

What type of english do you speak?

Just saw this on a professor's blog (he teaches at my alma mater. He teaches Latin, I took Greek, so I never took a course under him, but I like to hear his opinions.)
I'm really not sure where the 5% came from.

Your Linguistic Profile:

65% General American English 25% Dixie 5% Yankee 0% Midwestern 0% Upper Midwestern

What Kind of American English Do You Speak?

Utter disgust

I first heard about the student getting tased at the Kerry speech while driving to work. The radio station played audio from the video. Whatever you may think about the behavior of the student, the behavior of the police just disgusts me.

After watching the video tonight, I'm even more sickened. Why does the female police officer immediately draw a weapon when there was no visible threat? Why was the man tased when he was already on the ground with at least 4 officers over him? If they can't control one man without using a weapon then they need to return to police academy!

And perhaps most disturbing of all is that no one tried to intervene. I am least surprised by the behavior of John Kerry, who did not intervene, since it was important that he answer the man's question. Of course the man probably didn't hear it.

Look for me on Google maps Streetview!

A few weeks ago I read about the fleet of Chevy Cobalts that Google is employing to take photographs for their new Streetview feature of Google Maps. The streetview is so far limited to larger cities, like New York, Vegas, Denver, LA and San Fran.
So imagine my surprise when I saw one of them driving down my street with their little camera mounted on top. I am fortunate to live at a four way crossroads at which three of the ways are dead ends - so I knew I could catch him on his way out. (It is possible that the photos for my section of the street were taken on the ingress and the camera was turned off on the egress - to save film perhaps - but we'll have to wait and see.)
If the camera was working, there should be a picture of me sitting on my porch taking this picture of Google's picture taker.(You have to enlarge to see the camera mounted on the roof.)

Ginormous word contest!!

The otterblog is having a word contest. All you have to do is write a three sentence paragraph or a 5-7-5 haiku using the new words that Merriam Webster has added to their dictionary for 2007.
One of the new words is ginormous!
And the prize : a coffee cup from the Winston-Salem Journal!! Let the smackdown begin.

What level SPF for a creature of the night?

I am a Son worshiper, not a sun worshiper. I am the result of a thousand generation breeding program to develop the perfect denizen of the dark. Content to while away the daylight hours in my cave lit only by a flickering CRT or LCD. Fortunately I am often able to convince my bride to remain inside with me, avoiding the bright yellow sun (Yesss, insside. It hurts us it does. Yeesss, stay inside with us and our Preccciousss.)

So why bring this up now? Well, the sister of the bride and brother-in-law of the bat possess a boat. A rather large, sea-worthy vessel. We are going to visit them soon and just may be going in said boat on a 4-day trip to the Bahaman island of Bimini.

Can you even imagine the sunshine overload I could be exposed to!?! While I don't burst into flames in the first seconds of exposure, I do turn a nice lobsterry shade of red. And it hurts us it does. So if you have some uninvested funds lying around, put them in sunscreen. I hear demand is rising.

That's Greek to you? No excuse!

As a few readers of this blog know, I recently took four semesters of ancient Greek while an undergrad at UNCG. And I know that some of you are students of the New Testament, which happened to be written in ancient Greek. So I will share with you a tool that I found to be a lifesaver in my studies.
Tufts University has an extensive online library called The Perseus Digital Library. If you go to the classics portion of the site, you will find links to the texts of many ancient documents written in Greek and Latin, and most of them have at least one English translation that you can also choose. Why was this helpful in my translation work on Homer and Herodotus? Glad you asked. My textbook already included the text, but looking up a Greek word is very difficult if you do not know the root word, and scholars can tell you that many words look nothing like their roots. Here comes the beauty of hyperlinking. Each word in the Greek text of a Perseus document is a link to its dictionary definition. So when you see the first word in the Iliad, μῆνιν, it is a link to the dictionary entry for μῆνις, meaning wrath or anger (the Iliad is all about the destructive wrath of Achilles! )

A quick word about set-up. When you first go to Perseus, the text will be transliterated and will not show the Greek characters. You need to change two things: 1) the default font on your browser (I like the way Palatino Linotype looks, very close to Times New Roman) and 2)The configuration in Perseus itself needs to be set to Unicode (UTF-8) with pre-combined accents. These two changes will cause the computer display to more closely resemble the fonts you might see in a Greek New Testament and will show the accent marks.

I hope this is a useful tool in your studies. I'll be happy to help you set up the configuration if you post a comment.

And to get you started, here is a link to John 1.

How do you Google?

Thought I'd post a couple of quick tips about searching with Google: advanced search and cache.

Most people that I've watched simply go to google.com, enter a word or phrase and press enter to start their search. But have you ever noticed the little link to the right of the text field that says advanced search? Following that link opens up a whole world of googling possibilities. First thing you'll notice is that there are four fields instead of a paltry one on normal google, each with a special purpose. Try using "with the exact phrase" and see if it improves your results.

You can also specify how many search results will be displayed per page. This is helpful if you know you will need to filter through a lot of results and you want them all to be on the same page. After all, going through 300 results with only 10 per page is very tedious, but with 100 per page it's a little more doable.

Now a quick note about Google's cache. When you get your search results back from google, there is the result link, a brief description or excerpt from the page itself, the actual URL for the page you will be linking to, and then a link called 'Cached'. This is useful when the page that holds your result is updated frequently (like a newspaper site or a web forum) and the content may no longer be on the site. When Google indexes the web, it stores a lot of its results in a cache, so if the main link doesn't load or no longer has your info due to an update, try the cache. The cached page probably won't have any of the original images, but the text will be there.

Hope you find this useful.

Animal Testing the Roomba

Fellow scientists, researchers, officials from governmental agencies, military advisors: Please don your safety goggles. It's time to commence animal testing on the Roomba. This could get messy.

Our first, and only, test - the Willa Test.

Since I had important geek things to do (wash dishes), Willa needed to be fed, and the continual onslaught of marauding dust monsters had to be defended against, it came about that Willa and I were in the kitchen while Rosie was slaying dust bunnies (get 'em while they're young) in the living room.

First phase of the Willa test - she ate. But she did occassionally raise her head and listen to that whirring sound coming from the living room, especially when it approached the sophisticated, highly engineered containment device (a box, but now known as an HECD) that kept Rosie in the living room.

Phase two of the Willa test - look and ignore. When she had finished her morning meal, I invited Willa to the observation area (kitchen doorway) to view the carnage. She was at first more interested in the HECD than Rosie. Then Rosie came into full view! Willa looked at Rosie, looked at me, then sniffed the box, I mean the HECD. On to phase three.

Phase three of the Willa test - contact! After first ignoring Rosie from the observation area, she showed a desire to enter the living room/containment area. So she gingerly stepped over the HECD and into the kill zone. Rosie was following a perpendicular path across the LR/CA, giving Willa a full broadside view. Then, bumping into the wall, Rosie changed vectors and came directly at Willa - collision course!! Willa sniffed the floor and took two steps (she's good!) - collision averted. But then she snuck in BEHIND Rosie and sniffed her robotic pheromones (assuming robots have them). Unimpressed, she looked at me, leapt over the HECD and was done. The Willa test was complete, no casualties, no trauma, and Rosie was still pursuing the last screaming dust bunny into the hallway.

All in all, a successful test. The next phase of testing is our most grueling, a deep cover operation designed to test the limits of Rosie's abilities - Under The Bed ('cause we know where the breeders live!!).

Testing commences soon.

Red Roomba, Red Roomba, please vacuum all over

Can a man love a machine? He can if he is a geek and the machine is a)red; b)a robot; and c) it CLEANS HIS HOUSE!!.
The Bride Who Wore Black and I recently bought our very first domestic robot, an iRobot Roomba. We bought it Saturday and I put it through its very first test run today. It performed beautifully.
Hopefully, soon I will capture it on camera and share its wonderfulness with you. Perhaps after that I will equip it with rockets and plot to take over the world. But for now, it vacuums. That's all. But while Rosie vacuums, I get to do other stuff!!! And isn't that the only reason we want robots, to do our work for us so we can do more important stuff.
I have wanted one for a while but couldn't bring myself to spend the money on something that might not work. But it does, it does!! It just makes the geek in me smile! Now where's my flying car?

He tests, he passes, he graduates!!

Okay, most of the 2 million daily readers of this blog know that I was recently graduated from the University of North Carolina Greensboro (UNCG), and know that I owe a debt of gratitude to my lovely bride for supporting me through the process. But few of you know how close we came to December 14th being a date of woe rather than woo-hoo! Let me fill you in.

I am embarassed to admit that I have failed a course in college (Intro to Fingerpainting? No, 3rd semester Calculus. I retook it and made a C) and was treacherously close to failing a 2nd, very critical class. CSC 553 Theory of Computation sounds like a simple class for a computer science student, but at the end of the semester, with one homework project and one test remaining, I was failing. Not "Oh I wanted to get an A but I'm stuck with a B" failing, but "I am failing and it is not mathematically possible to pass without a curve" failing.

I had been to speak with my instructor. She was cautiously optimistic. She said that she grades much more heavily on your later work than on the early work. If she sees an improvement that indicates you understand, she will forgive past grades. But essentially it came down to my last test (not technically a final - she gives 4 tests and no true final exam - but it certainly had an air of finality all over it). Oh yes, a final - pun fully intended - piece of the puzzle. This course is a core requirement for graduation and it is only offered in Fall semesters. Meaning a failure would set graduation back a full year!

I was mortified to tell the bride about my predicament. With each test, I thought I understood the material and was prepared for anything that she could throw at me, except what she actually threw at me. With each test I sank lower and lower. In my defense, several of my classes had no assignment graded and returned prior to the drop deadline. This class had only one. So I didn't have a chance to evaluate the course before I was stuck with it.

So here we are. The bride's company Christmas party was on Friday, Dec 1. My test was Monday, Dec 4, 9:00 am. We went to the party and spent the rest of the weekend studying. Yes, I said we. On our large whiteboard, we evaluated and drew Turing machine diagrams all weekend. There were about 60 probelem sets that she could draw test questions from and we made it through about half of them.

I went to the test confident, I felt pretty good during it, but the points just didn't add up to a passing grade. I went to see the professor (Dr. Francine Blanchet-Sadri, one of the world's leading researchers in the area of Combinatorics on Words, studyer of Algebraic Theory of Languages and Automata, impressive, eh?) on Wednesday, but the tests were not graded and would not be until the next week. Considering the difficulty of what she had to grade, 8 complex problems, with each student completing a unique solution, she was offering a pretty quick turn-around. So I passed the time by taking the other 4 final exams that week. By Friday, I was burned out and didn't care.

But then came Monday, and I cared a great deal. Other classes started posting results. I was in a computer lab just around from Francine's office, checking email. She walked in to pick up a print job. I didn't want to pester her, so I even avoided making eye contact. Then she approached me. And she was smiling. She had not completely decided on a final grade, but she had been impressed by the last test. She said I had done very well, completely solving some of the hardest problems. I had passed the course, she assured me.

Eventually all grades were posted and I received a C (not even a C-, but a solid, bona-fide C). We had done it. So, now you see how much my degree has really been a joint effort. Thank you dear!

The Lump moves!!

I have been gently prodded by someone and encouraged to post.
So, how about an update?
Since I posted last:
I attended a grid computing workshop at Appalachian State University in Boone, NC. Great gig - they put me up in a hotel, fed me and PAID me, plus taught me some fundamentals about distributed computing. Geeks with money to burn, gotta love it.
I spent Thanksgiving at home with my wonderful bride.
I nearly went crazy studying for finals.
I passed said finals and graduated from the University of North Carolina Greensboro.(More on those last two in my next post.)
I spent Christmas and New Years with my bride and some (newly) close friends. I hope to have many holidays doing the same.

An inadvertant lack of equality

It may be possible, implausible and improbable though it may be, that some poor soul has wandered to this site, looked at my most illustrious list of links, and attempted to find, by following those links, just who is Fred Reed and why does Leatherwing link to him. Well, due to the lack of an = (that's an "equals" sign) the link to Fred was rerouted back to this page.

The problem has been corrected, I hereby offer apologies and encouragement. Go check it out. Fred is an old codger, and most of his articles reflect his codgeriness. But they also reflect the opinion of an old soldier, world traveller, journalist, and thinker. You may not agree with all he says, but will probably laugh a little and maybe see things from another perspective. (Mild warning: he is an old codger and occassionally uses words you wouldn't say in church. But you've probably heard them all before.)

I like this, but should I?

I recently got sick (and unfortunately infected a friend or two) and missed a few days of school. While watching the toob, I saw an ad for a new show on Showtime called Dexter. Showtime has made the first two episodes available online. I am really excited about the networks publishing their content online (I've recently watched episodes of Studio 60, Heroes, Numb3rs, The Unit, Jericho, and 30 Rock online. I love that I can miss a show and still not miss it!) so I decided to watch Dexter during my recuperation.

First, a confession. I like dark subject matter. I enjoy dark thrillers if they are intelligently written. I grew up on horror movies, cut my teeth reading early Stephen King and thought that all was right with the world when horror made a comeback in the early 80's. So in many ways, a show like Dexter is right up my alley. You see, Dexter is a serial killer, with a twist:

****Spoiler warning****
Dexter is the good guy. He's a cop who only allows himself to indulge his murderous urges on other killers who have escaped justice. He was trained by his police officer father to cover his tracks and recognize those that deserve to die.
*****End Spoilers******

I know that on some levels, this is social commentary:
The police, the judicial system, and by extension, we the people are occasionally given the duty of deciding life or death for criminals. It is not always done with justice, so could an individual, unencumbered by the rules we impose on a civil society, do a better job?
Should any policeman ever be given the right/ability to take a human life? Can any of them truly be trusted?

I remember a fascinating short story I read about a vampire hunter who was able to do what no one else could do because, like the vamps, he liked killing and was not squeamish about the disgusting nature of his work. Dexter is a character in the same vein.

Like I said, I know that the creators would probably say that this is social commentary and that they perform a public service by causing us to think about these sorts of things. But the truth is that they have created a pleasant character, placed him in a beautiful setting (Miami) and made him a hero because of, not in spite of, the terrible things he does.

I know that Dexter will have many fans. The show is well made. It is likeable (to me). And by watching this likeable show, I would subject myself to weekly mutilations and murders. Carried out by the hero. I don't know how you feel about the idea of televisiona and movies desensitizing society, but I think Dexter is a near perfect vehicle for carrying it out.

Fortunately, Dexter is carried on Showtime, which I don't have, so I won't be watching.

Unfortunately, part of me wishes I could.

Life in a Northern Town

Recently the Bride who wore Black and I visited some old friends from Texas who now live in Maryland. The Saturday night that we arrived there was a street party in downtown Frederick. I live in Winston-Salem, NC and the city has been trying to generate an active downtown life for the city, but we just don't hold a candle to Frederick, and I'm not sure why.

My first thought is the age of the city. Frederick is about 100 years older than the Winston part of W-S, which seems to be the dominant part of W-S. Frederick is built closer together, with retail, restaurant and residential mixed together, often in the same building. Maybe southern cities had more land and spread out more. But the eclectic mix we saw in Frederick was something that I can't see being generated by city mandate. It just grew that way. I liked it quite a bit.

Things Willa teaches me about God

I was driving to school this morning listening to Revolution, by George Barna. My buddy TJ loaned me his copy on CD, and like him, I have to rewind pretty frequently just to make sure I heard what I think I heard.

I had listened to one section about three times. The point was that worship is not for the worshipper but for the one worshipped. I understood that and listened on. A while later, as I got excited about the idea of revolutionary Christian living, I finally truly got the point. I was driving along, thinking "I want to do something important (for God)". The emphasis was of course on me. I want to be important. But a revolutionary doesn't see himself as important, only God is important (I know that we are important to God, Jesus died for us, etc., but our worth comes completely from Him, so it is still all about Him.)

So how does Willa fit into this? I often need real world examples to wrap my mind around ideas, and I often use my relationship with Willa. For instance, if I am watching television, Willa is lying beside me on the floor, and I turn of the TV, Willa jumps up, ready to go. This is not because she understands what a television is and that she knows the pretty pictures are gone now so I might as well leave. No, she understands me (as much as she can). She is a devoted follower of me, and when the TV goes off, she knows that I am about to move, so she gets ready to move also. I wish I had the diligence in my observation and study of God that she has in studying me.

But back to doing something important for God. Willa is a good dog. She doesn't have accidents in the house or destroy furniture, she is very obedient, and scares away people when I don't want to answer the door. I even expect her to protect our house while I am away and she is there. But, if I come home and the house has been robbed and she slept through the whole thing, would I love her less. NO, because all I truly want from her is what she gives me every day, love and absolute devotion. I don't expect her to contribute important things to the family, I don't even need for her to. I just want her to love me.

I think that's what God wants from me. My buddy TJ has a phrase - "God doesn't need me to get it done" . I think I may have just gotten it.