You got owned

Painful memories

Fatman owes me big

The Fatman owes me big. I talked him up to a man who's hiring here at the place I work.

Saw the most beautiful site today... although it's kinda sad too...
Was driving into work and the streets around my work are a little tricky... some of them are one way streets some are two way... you just have to pay attention. One in particular starts off as a two way and then makes one side go down to the next street over and then they both become one way streets. This morning... a dude starts on the two way part... ignores the "DO NOT ENTER" sign and the painted street with the arrow directing our lane to make a right hand turn... and keeps driving. Mind you he did slow down, so I'm not sure if he was just confused... none the less I made the turn as instructed by all the signs and I looked down the next street that would take me back to the other street if I was so inclined and low and behold there was a police officer pulling the car over who didn't read all the signs...
Reminds me of why the stupid ass snake bridge took so long to build. You see they built this people bridge over the main road that leads to downtown. It's a stupid snake... anyway... not once, not twice, but three separate times a Semi crashed into the bridge while they were working on it. First time there was injuries. Second time there was warnings posted and height hitters that told dumbasses that the bridge up farther is this height right now, that would send off warning bells... some of that was for the driver... but mostly it was for the workers to run for their lives... third time I would have given up on the stupid thing... but whatever...

My mother gave away my little sister yesterday... (Little sister being a dog) I'm not sure how I feel about that... I mean she never really was "my" dog... but it still kinda hurts that I was not involved in this little decision.... seems my sister bonded with the little old lady immediately... so at least she's going to a happy home... one where she'll not be tormented by my niece. That makes two little sisters gone... at least this one didn't choose me to have her final seizure with...

Oh! I quit my theater job... sorry folks... no more free movies... I know, I know... you all loved it... but I can't handle doing that much work on the weekends and nights for so little pay... I mean standing or running around for 8 hours is hard work... and for what? $5.15 an hour? It's torture I'm telling you... and when one of the managers told me she was working for $6.00 an hour... I figured it was time to look for something else.... plus Madacascar is coming out this Friday and I don't want to clean up after those kids... I mean those 30,000+ people that went to Star Wars in that theater was enough for me....

Nothing really new... so here are some links

Stop Smoking ad - I love how they had to define "Road Rash"
Star Wars might claim two more - Um... damn... you'd think at age 20 you'd be a little more smart...
Cybernetic Parrot Sausage - In the WTF? Category...

IP Phone, Movies Etc.

More fun with IP telephones

The telcom guys are at it again… This time they bring up the court ruling from last Thursday…

Now from what I have read… Vonage was running into issues with the local phone companies because they refused to give them access to the 911 telephone infrastructure because they were a direct competition. Think about it…. Vonage offers telephone service to people that costs only $25 for unlimited access. This includes every feature that companies like Qwest have been offering people at nickel and dime pricing. They start at about $20 for a basic phone line. Then it’s about $.75 for each feature you want to add. If you added all the features of Vonage you would then add up to at least $40…then we talk about long distance. That’s a whole other beast. Vonage gives you free long distance to anywhere in the U.S plus Canada which was the best feature for my wife and I considering that she would like to talk to her sister more often….
So… why would the local phone companies give access to Vonage to their 911 structure since they spent the money building it up. Plus they want to keep their customers so they don’t want companies like Vonage to have the full package. They play it off as Vonage being unsafe and not for the masses… with the court rulings, Vonage should have more leverage with the local companies now because the FCC has determined that because there are enough people using it now… it needs to be safe.

Now one of the Telcom guys… that’s the one who’s up the ass of Walt… he states that we are compliant until someone moves their phone. Suddenly we are no longer compliant the minute someone moves the phone to a new port. To which my immediate thought was that no other system that we have to date has that ability, so why would you consider it a deficiency? Plus if you configure the system properly with an updated database it keeps track of it all on its own. Others in the group seem to have agreed with me. One person stated that we solved that problem with policy. You don’t move your phone without a work order, then the updated information gets put into the system so that E911 calls go to the right place. Then the other part of Walt’s brain said, “correct, 'we' have to make up for voip manufactures deficiencies.” Which is total bullshit because again if you hook it up properly it will update itself… One of the guys in my group then stated, “So, just so I understand... if I pick up my ISDN set and carry it to your office and plug it in, it'll work (on my number) and the system will have the right location information?” Which I thought was brilliant. There is no other system right now that treats the phone set as an entity. It’s always been a port in the wall that was the end point. They didn’t care what happened past the port… they sent the signal to the port. If there was nothing there, then it didn’t ring. So where do the deficiency come in?

The problem is two fold. One is that this is a new techonology and people are treating it like the plague. Second is the fact that they feel that in order for it to be accepted by the masses it needs to work exactly like the old system. I mean EXACTLY. Down to the flaws of the old system. For example… the old system had a “feature”… that was if there was a block on the phone for long distance it would prompt you for a 5 digit code. If you had the code then it would let you make the long distance call and it would charge it to your department properly. However, there was something that wasn’t really known about that system. That is… the old system didn’t verify the 5 digit code. Yep, this means that you could press any 5 digits into the phone and it would let the call go through. If the code turned out to be invalid… it would just charge it to the port that the phone came from. Somebody’s budget would finally pay for it. Well, the new system actually does check… go figure. So the Telcom guys said that it was broken… it couldn’t work… it has to work EXACTLY like it does now.
One of the solutions to this “problem” was to load all of the possible combinations into the system. Yep… you read right… all 100,000 of them. The system could only handle the input of 30,000 at a time so they had to put it in several text files and try and import it… well, they turned it on after the import and all the phones crashed… turns out the phones load all the codes for the user into it’s own memory and low and behold they can’t handle that much….
Don’t know what they finally did for that “feature” but the system is working now…

Movies

Unleashed. Good film. Not going to win any awards mind you … but a good film none the less. It’s the story of a man who’s been turned into an attack dog. Take off the collar and he attacks. Don’t take it off and he just stands there. The master found him as a boy and trained him to be that way.. One day he gets in car accident and is set free from his master… he learns music… he learns to cook and be a human being…then the master finds him again… wants him to kill again.. however the dog is no longer in the mood. I won’t get into it much more… but the fighting was good…. It’s one of those chic flicks with fighting in it. Both sexes will find good in this film… if the chics don’t mind the blood they’ll like it too. I would pay matinee price for this film.

Star Wars Episode III – Revenge of the Sith. Man this one is dark. I can see why Lucas said he wouldn’t take his 9 year old to the show… the scene that implied the killings in the Jedi Temple were enough for me… then there was the burning of Vader… all a bit much for little kids. I didn’t go to SW to hear quality dialog. I’ll save the hope for Serenity… I did have a problem however with the start of the film with the buzz bots. Suddenly force push doesn’t work through glass or something… but other than that it was a plausible film… I liked the recreation of the sets at the end of the film… definitely a nice touch for the fan boys out there. I would pay full price for this film… even go on opening weekend… it’s Starwars… but I’m just not THAT excited about it anymore… so I didn’t stand in line for hours… but I did go on Friday night… it came out on Thursday morning at 12:01AM…

Tonight I plan on seeing another movie… I’m thinking SW again for my wife since she didn’t go with me on Friday… or Unleashed with some friends who didn’t go with me the first time… I need to see a couple of movie this week to make up for the crappy weekend I had…

Movie Theater Woes
I complain about this job a lot… that’s because it’s boring and hard work for very little pay. I think that’s the crux of the whole thing. I mean they work us to the bone and for what? $5.15 an hour… it’s not right… picking up shit that people have left behind. Starwars fans were the worst this week. I think it was mostly due to the shear numbers… popcorn everywhere…. It took about 8-10 of us about 10 minutes to clean the place… mind you it wasn’t totally clean… just clear enough for the next horde to come rolling in. People with popcorn… and all kinds of other crap…. Top it off with the schedule being wrong and theaters breaking early… it was a fun time… NOT.
Saturday I found a wallet. It had at least $101 in it… not totally sure because I didn’t open it… just saw what was about to fall out of it. I walked it out of the theater and handed it to the manager. 3 minutes later… a man comes in looking for the wallet. I said to check with customer service and that Mr. White had it… the manager calls me over and tells me to never look in those things because the customer will claim that something’s missing… to which I said I didn’t look… he said that he’s going to tell the customer that another customer found it and handed it to him… that way I wasn’t involved anymore… I went back to cleaning theaters… turns out the guy claims money was missing… then played the race card because Mr. White is a black man… I would seem that Mr. White was mad at me after that because he kept giving me shit work to do… like working the trash room and such…
Two things could have happened… one is that the dude forgot he bought popcorn and soda and therefore a little short… two is that Mr. White took some money before he returned the wallet… either way… it’s a messed up situation…
Sunday… cleaned theaters again for about 2 hours… then Mr. White put me on podium… I knew this was coming… I called my wife on my break before I went to podium and I told her… watch… I’ll be there for the next 6 hours… sure enough… I was… bastards… had to even call on the radio to get my replacement because they forgot to switch me out, despite the fact that Mr. White told them to do it before he left… which was an hour before I went off my shift… bastards… all of them…
So you can see why I want to go to as many movies as possible… they owe it to me…
So this week I’m going to look for anther job… one that pays in cash a little more…