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EIGRP Variance pisses me off. Why the hell would you want this to be a global routing process command? I mean... really. Bullshit. I've hashed over this before. Not here, but in meatspace. I think you should have control of specificity of route calculations that fall under variance on a per autonomous system basis. But noooooooooo. Bitches. This is making me sleepy.

My first Photo.net post in months. If ya have time, go rate it puhleeze.

Evolution complete. I can say that every interaction I've had with carrier service personnel has been complete ass right up until I escalated tot he point were I get the top NOC guys. I can also say that every interaction I've had with carrier service personnel at the top tier NOC level has been wonderful. I need a direct hotline. Long story short, all done. Coffee reload commence!

Waaaaay to early to be at work.

ugh.

I rolled out of the house this morning and forgot my lunch. I had to drive in this morning and knew I wouldn't have time for the morning report if I waited until I got into the office, so I worked on it from home. Frustration. I finished the report via remote drive mapping over VPN, but when I tried to mail it out, my Exchange mailbox was full. I hate that shit. So, I had to VPN from another box that had the Outlook client (vs. OWA) so I could have a bleary-eyed delete fest this morning. I got the report out and hit the road. Part of the problem is I have recently been getting SPAM at work. I never used to get SPAM at my office account, but now it's a daily thing. More rules. Rules. Filters. An overstuffed trash can. I walked in this morning to find a ghost town. Every office door was shut but my bosses. Joe called in... something about electricians fixing his meter loop... lucky dog. I got stabbed in the back with another CIO presentation at like 5:30 on Friday afternoon. It's due on Wednesday, so I guess my day will be filled with the juggling of putting out little fires that crop up throughout the day and working on this stupid shit presentation. I can't believe I forgot my lunch. It's just because I was in a big rush. I need caffeine. I need to clean my camera. I need a sabbatical. Did I mention I sold my rent house in Virginia Beach last week. Good riddance. It was a great house, but being a landlord to property 1600 miles away sucks the big one. I am systematically working towards early retirement. I want to get away from the rat race... find the rat nap. I have to be at work at 5:30 tomorrow morning for a 6:00 aye emm cutover of one of our Internet DS3's to a new BGP peer via a new circuit. Joy. I think I'm going to plan on leaving work early... hmmm... if eight to five makes way for seven to four, then five thirty to two thirty sounds about just right. Time to see the dentist. 2:30. Get it? Tooth hurty. I'm so easily amused. Jason, if you're reading this, I need to talk to you asap. Oddly, I just had a random memory of when I jammed pencil lead into my childhood partner-in-crime's leg and broke it off. I hope that doesn't mean I have latent violent tendencies. Heh. It's only quarter after nine and I feel like I've been here six hours. I can't believe I forgot my lunch.

So, there were a lot of mosquitos out this weekend. I couldn't resist...
they liked me The photos are a bit random. The only ones I've uploaded are over at 13th Stone under "last uploads". Some suck quite well, others are not so bad... take a look and let me know what you think. Here are a few of them:
rose... smaller than a nickel
fuzzy phallic phenomenon... about 1.5 cm long
a completely blue fly
waiting to unleash his kung fu
a green darner... i took a lot of these
i got my pants dirty for this bitch
now that's what i call bloodshot eyes!
looking for some food
this guy was about 1 cm
just a busy guy
tattered
dolphin fun in the pressure wave
pelican flight
pelican flight
birds disturbed
birds disturbed... again
great blue heron
a completely blue fly... again

Off to work with the turkeys...

How is this weekend gone?

Excellent. Have you ever seen Monarch butterflies migrate? Hundreds of thousands of butterflies swarming about? Image that on a smaller scale, but instead of butterflies... dragonflies. All around my mother's house... dragonflies. There were dozens of different species. I was determined to get a few shots of green darners since we don’t have many in Houston. I'll have to wait until we get back this afternoon to check them out since they are still on the camera, but I think I managed to grab some after they bedded down last night. I also took some shots of the great blue heron that frequents the area where my mom lives. We’re planning on a stop at my grandmothers before rolling back north, but so far the trip has been great. Bob cooked fresh red snapper for dinner last night and this morning was homemade taquitos from City Tortilla Factory. Very good eats. Anyhoo, gotta run... I’ll try to post some photos when I get back.

I misspoke. Late last night, we found out that I was not on call this weekend (which would have complicated the trip), but it seemed like it was too late to hassle with it. This morning, we took a second look at the idea and decided a spontaneous road trip (even if just a day trip) would be nifty. The coin is still flipping in the air, but here are few second looks to celebrate second looks... The weather is fab outside today. I hope everyone has a wonderful Saturday!!

Blanco's. Thai Pepper. Davenport's. Stag's Head. It seems like a lot for the little time we gave it. EL and I were heading out of town this weekend, but thought better of it. Nope... this weekend will be nothing but some much needed R&R. Turning in early on a Friday night... next stop social security.

Holy shitballs batman! What could be better than a Friday? I'll tell ya... a Friday where your wife gets up and drives with you into the office over lattes and conversation, sends you off with a kiss, and you enter the office to find Thelma and Louise gone to a meeting across town! My grossly unqualified boss and his corrupt boss are off trying to further the reach of their regime this morning. Both of their doors closed wasn't as big a giveaway as the overall happy air in the building. An unheard sigh of relief is still swirling about. On the way home from work yesterday, I stopped at the Arboretum. It was my first time there in several weeks. Construction near the endangered plant garden is still underway and a lot of the summer foliage has been removed to prep the ground for winter growth. I wasn't there to take some amazing photos as much as I was there to just get back in the swing of it all... it helps to tell yourself that when a lot of shots down turn out like you'd hoped. I didn't have time to post-process many to put online, but the flower from last night's post and this little 'pillar managed to make it. I have a few more that are acceptable enough to keep that I'll put up this weekend when I'm not busy pampering EL. I really don't get to spend enough time with her. We had planned on taking a little road trip this weekend, but I'm on call again. Again. Anyhoo, happy morning and all that... I think I'll enjoy the moment.

Sleepy. I couldn't be more happy tomorrow is Friday. w00t!

Meeting after useless meeting. I am so fuckin' ready to get out of here today. I finally got my resume online and listed with about 4 or 5 job sites. My laptop was ghosted yesterday due to OS corruption... The Micro$oft kind, not the penguin kind. It was pretty cool... I handed my laptop to the desktop guy to ghost the corporate XP Pro load over the entire drive, then installed Mandrake 9.1 to dynamically resize the NTFS partition on the fly to make room for the sweet OS. Now, I'm back to dual boot so I can access company coded intranet sites that use transparent authentication and are inaccessible with non-IE, domain aware browsers. Everything else is 100% Linux. I even have my Exchange mail and calendar running smooth as a baby's ass in 9.1. We live in a point and click world. Vendors tell lies at catered lunch presentations and executive adrenaline starts pumping for nifty shit that costs too much. You have to use real tools to get real work done sometimes. Maybe there can be a middle ground, but I'm not on a crusade to reveal it... I just want my non-M$ OS. Tonight is CSI... the real one, not that Miami crap. It's the only hour of television I actually look forward to each week. I have a mobile med check up scheduled for next Wednesday morning. Some nurse named Nakisha is coming to my office to get some Clayton pee and blood whilst assaulting me with medical history questions... Not like "who invented penicillin?"", but do you have any gimp, glaucomic, cancerous, HIV infected, great uncles with fibromyalgia?". Joy. Nothing much is new... Work still sucks... Home is still great. EL is the best. Tomorrow is Friday. Zippety doo da. update: I lied. I forgot to mention that today was "National Boss Day", so all the ass snorklers had donut parties and greeting cards for the bosses. I veto'd the donut parties. I resisted the card signing frenzy. I am nauseated. I must have not mentioned it because it had been blocked from my memory. I only just recalled this morning's antics because a rump smoocher galloped by my cube looking for hiney to shine with supple lips.