This Blog Is Full Of Crap

I saw some black kittens in the bushes last night.

I watched them for a while, romping and playing and looking around.

When I got close to them, they ducked back into the bushes.

No, Nardo would probably eat them or something.

Oh well.

I never manage to get to the Geek Gatherings, which I think the Technology Bytes guys are having this Friday, but I will do my best to get to Garf's deal tomorrow:

Downing Street Pub Wednesday, June 4, 2008

5:00 PM – 8:00 PM

Sip ‘n Surf With

Michael Garfield, The High-Tech Texan® and

Woodford Reserve Bourbon

Join Us For An Evening Of The Latest High-Tech Equipment on Display With The High-Tech Texan®,

Michael Garfield and Woodford Reserve Distiller’s Select Small Batch Kentucky Straight Bourbon.

Stop In And Meet Michael Garfield, The High-Tech Texan®.

Michael and friends will be giving away great prizes throughout the event.

Steve Sanders, Brand Manager for Woodford Reserve Bourbon, will also be on hand to discuss the distillery and samples.

Be Sure To Check Out Michael Garfield Every Saturday From 11AM-2PM
On The 9-5-0 To Learn About The Latest High-Tech Gear And Cool New Gadgets.

Downing Street Pub
2549 Kirby (@ Westheimer)
Houston, Texas 77019
713-523-2291

Woodford whips up some excellent paint remover there that'll curl your toes and cleanse your soul...if I were still a hard-drinkin man, I'd water a bottle or two of this on my shelf, believe me.

Lots of tickets in the queue.

Many of them are screaming for PTR/Reverse DNS to be fixed.

A lot of those say they need it fixed, but don't say what IP address needs their PTR fixed and what to point it to.

Or "Set it back the way it was."

*sigh*

First ticket: "Change DNS to X"
Second ticket: "Change DNS to Y
Third ticket: "WHY DID YOU CHANGE MY DNS TO X WHEN I ADDED ANOTHER TICKET TO CHANGE IT TO Y?"

The ticket queue is massive.

Should have updated your earlier request instead of tossing in a new ticket.

Today is a day when wasteful, panicky or careless behavior punishes itself.

"Help me!" is the subject line of the ticket.

I scroll over it and open up one that actually has a descriptive subject line, because I know I can resolve that quickly as a part of a batch of other tickets.

A lot of this behavior can be attributed to our training customers to post tickets without essential information, not challenge-response on when they don't give enough information or when they post the ticket in the wrong manner.

We have rewarded misbehavior, and it's coming back to haunt... well, the customers who persist in it during a crisis, I guess.

I'll do my best to handle all the issues that come in, but the ones who have given me all the information necessary to get their issue handled quickly and haven't packed it with paragraphs of confusing rants and rambles and a mile-long history are going to come first.

I don't have time to sift and investigate and cogitate and noodle and ponder and argue and tease apart... just hitting the quick ones that can get a bandage and walk away under their own power.

Haven't even checked the email queue.

Probably shouldn't.

They're supposed to submit tickets, because you can't authenticate an email and sending passwords over text transfers is a no-no.

Also, emails tend to circumvent earlier ticket requests.

Send in a ticket. Update the ticket. Respond in the ticket.

We are in disaster mode. Please, do not make the disaster worse for us and yourself.

Don't panic.

I'm not angry, mind you.

Just disappointed that bad behavior might get rewarded when those displaying good behavior have to wait behind them in line.

Internet rumors are swirling. Some people say we haven't posted photos of the fire or damage or recovery effort because it's a coverup for the FBI seizing servers.

It's amazing what the human (or subhuman) mind will concoct in what it perceives is the absence of information.

Here's a thought: there weren't any photos because anybody going around with a camera is a disaster instead of, say, working to resolve the issues caused by that disaster, is about as useless as a guy with his thumb up his ass.

If you need photos and videos and live-on-the-scene immersive bullshit, well, the MSM has got you pretty well trained, doesn't it.

Customer wrote in to say that if people weren't running their own nameservers before this disaster, they should learn how to run them or learn how to walk dogs for a living.

I'm not able to argue with that position. I find myself agreeing that if you're in the business of reselling, you should know the basics. The more you offload and shirk, the more that can come back to bite you later.

It's like being a cab driver who doesn't know how to use their wipers.

Name resolvers are having issues again. A pair that we pointed folks to is acting up.

The folks that did it themselves, for the most part, are discovering this and switching to a more reliable pair we posted about.

The folks that we did it for, well, they're complaining yet again.

Bad behavior and ignorance is once again rewarded.

We've never been here to administer their servers. This is an administrative task. They need to learn or burn.

Failure to stick to that position is coming back to haunt us.

I've noticed a strong correlation between the invective and profanity used by customers and the level of their ignorance of technical matters or lack of robustness in their hosting plans.

More hands on deck. Hopefully they know the basics.

I had a very strange dream last night.

One of the topics someone suggested for last night's story was "Dragon" and another was "Stripper poles."

I thought about those for a bit and then conked out.

I had a dram of a thriving community.

Farms. A little bit of industry and commerce. Some trade with other communities.

Development was steady, but sustainable.

Education was compulsory for the citizens, and hygiene/health care was advanced compared to other populations.

The community was safe from crime and war, since the local constabulary and army benefited from mandatory military training and service on the part of all able-bodies citizenry.

Government was small and officials were freely elected, but they all knew to ask the dragon for his opinion on all matters.

For his advice, the dragon was paid in a steady diet of livestock... and criminals. And if the dragon wanted to hunt, he was welcome to go after predators when he felt like it.

Every so often, a convoy of religious authorities would come by the town to argue that being ruled by a dragon was unholy or wrong.

The dragon preferred to debate them. He always won. But he didn't always eat his opponents.

That, he only did if they lost and wouldn't admit that they were wrong. Or rude.

If they came away from the experience seeing how everybody benefited, maybe those communities would allow themselves to be run in a similar fashion.

There weren't many dragons around, but there were a few retired mermaid queens, unicorns, sphinxes and other long-lived smartypants creatures available as "advisors" to human communities.

I never did learn the name of the dragon.

The Human Rights Council continues to act as the pus-filled growth on the pimply ass of the United Nations:

The United Nations Committee on NGOs met in New York Wednesday with an agenda that included possibly stripping the umbrella organization of Reform Judaism of the observer NGO status it has held since 1972. The decision was later delayed until Thursday.

"Sanctioning the World Union would be extremely unjust and unwarranted," said World Union of Progressive Judaism president Rabbi Uri Regev. "It would be a sad statement as to the way that the decisions and considerations play out in the UN today."

Cuba requested the revocation of the union's status following a Human Rights Council session in Geneva in January titled "Human Rights Violations Emanating from Israeli Military Incursions in the Occupied Territories," where, in protest at the session's exclusive focus on Israel, World Union representative David Littman tried to read passages from the Hamas charter calling for the destruction of Israel.

Littman was interrupted three times by the presiding officer on the grounds that Hamas's ideology was not the topic before the council. Before he took his seat, Littman told the presiding officer that "something is rotten in the state of this council."

Of course, when you're looking at the United Nations, it's hard to tell one bleeding, infected sore from another.

Turtle Bay is long overdue for a lancing.

Sometimes I wonder if Nardo misses having his face paw-bopped by Piper when he eats dinner...

I was talking with someone Wednesday and the subject of family style/communal meals as a social reinforcer came up.

Piper and Nardo always ate together while Edloe and Frisky ate separately.

Sure, Nardo would cross whiskers with Piper and she's swat him for it, but they still ate together.

The "Let a crappy-hitting Brad Ausmus teach a crappy-hitting J.R. Towles" project is over for the time being.

Long overdue. Way, way long overdue.

Let's hope that Cruz Junior is soon to follow.

Junior followed.

A great day for the Astros, indeed.

Now let's see about solving the Bourn problem.

Barring the temptation to curl up in the bathtub and kill this bottle of Jack Daniels after this hellweek, I will be going to visit Good Ol Garf for a few hours of fun, frivolity, and fried squid.

Tune in to 950AM in Houston through that radio-thing ya got, or hit up KPRC Radio for the stream.

If I remember, I'll drag the wife's old battered laptop along for the videocam deal.

I'm about six weeks away from buying the Killer Laptop, unless Garf... you know... hint hint... knows a few folks... who knows a few folks... maybe check out an Alienware box or two... hint hint...

Sure "No plan survives battle" but if you have a good plan, you'll do better than someone who doesn't.

The advice I listed:

• Have a written plan.
• Offsite backups.
• Run your own DNS servers, add off-site tertiary and quaternary offsite alternates, and keep them in sync.
• Redundancy, load-balancing, multihoming, clustering - cost them out.
• Keep your patches, downloads, and updates current.
• If you're losing thousands of dollars an hour, perhaps spending pennies an hour wasn't enough? Buy what you need to buy.
• Don't have your emergency contact email on the box that has the emergency.
• Read all documentation and materials, watch all videos. Learn how to drive like an expert.
• Learn the lingo. (ie. Don't ask for MX records to point to IP addresses.)
• Know the procedures and limitations of the company you're hosting with.
• Call an admin now, not a lawyer later. (Class action lawsuits make a lot of noise but very little money for the participants.)
• If you're ever saying "I'm just a businessman, I don't know this technical stuff" then get someone who does. Now. And if you can't afford one, then find a new line of business. Now
• Provide info, not threats. Solve the problem, not the symptoms.
• If you need a reboot, submit a reboot ticket. Not a normal ticket.
• Field surgeons don't do boob jobs - get up and running first, worry about cosmetics later. But don't ignore them entirely.
• Meaningful subject lines to tickets. (If your system is not in the affected area, mark it at such)
• Know where emergency announcements are posted.
• Know your passwords and access codes. Store them in a secure place, keep them updated, and don't use simple ones.
• Tech support is tech support, not school.
• Test your plans. Make backups and recover from them.
• Try before you buy and build.
• Know your single points of failure.
• Educate your own clients and customers.
• Shop for resellers intelligently.
• Never act for action's sake.

If you find yourself frustrated, angry, or humiliated at any moment in dealing with the current, take a moment to think and tell yourself at the very least, you are going to work out these issues to prepare for the next potential disaster.

Oh, and if you're thinking of switching companies, think about all the things about the current company you have issues with... do they have answers for those issues? Are they real answers, or just glossy big-font words on marketing materials?

In the end, there's always risk. But with some planning you can reduce risk significantly and handle the rest if your plan is solid enough and you're willing to spend what you need to spend the money to learn it or the time to manage it correctly.

Maybe I've mentioned this before, but I've always believed that there should be a simple remote and an advanced remote for all remote control devices.

Just give me Pause, Play, Louder, Quieter, Fast Forward, and Rewind on the simple remote and all the other features on the advanced remote.

And if there's a menu option that'll mess me up big time, please put a confirmation box on the screen when I hit it, okay?

Jim McKay's doctors suffer the agony of defeat.

Slampo has some choice words about everybody's least-favorite cornrowed camerawhore and makes a prediction regarding where she'll be spotted next.

Somewhere in Hell, Ken Lay is laughing at this never-ending joke he's inflicted on the city.

His legacy, for worse or worst, lives on.

I suppose I should mention that after a week of madness, I crawled to the bus stop and got on the 82.

Normally, I take the 53. I thought I saw 53 on the display board.

I said Fifty Three to myself as I got on.

It was an 82.

At first, I thought I was just brain-dead.

Nope. Because I remember saying TEE HEE FIFTY THREE stepping on the bus.

Thanks, METRO. Thanks for that extra 20 minutes walking in the heat.

Blasted METRO on the show.

We can track flights and cruise ships and stolen cars.

But despite tax dollars spent on GPS units on buses, we can't get real-time information on breakdowns and delays of buses.

What a crock.

Totally stunned. Vegas never extended the monorail to the airport?

I'm absolutely stunned that federal tax dollars went to the Houston Danger train and not a Vegas monorail extension.

Barak Obama's done what Rudy G., Rick Lazio, Jeanine Pirro, and John Spencer didn't have the cojones to do - beat a power-mad, platitude-vomiting Hillary Clinton.

Let's hope that the majority of Democrats and Republicans alike who recognize that she's bad for the country learn from this and find candidates that can end her reign in the primaries or general elections of 2012 instead of the cowards or wimps who withdraw from contests early.

Achmed "Concrete Mafia" Queri threatens once again to destroy Israel in terms that the press continues to misread:

Questioned by the Ma'an news agency over Israel's new construction plans in east Jerusalem, Qurei said that if Israel tries to impose facts on the ground, "I will tell them that we spent 30 years persuading Palestinians to accept a two-state solution, and if we do not succeed in achieving it, we will return to the idea of one state."

Return?

Fateh has never had plans for a single state solution.

It's had plans for a zero-state solution, then a UN-funded kleptocracy/thugocracy to keep Arafat, Queri, Abbas, and all the Fateh cronies and their own descendants rich in perpetuity while squatting out pennies to keep the masses breeding up a population bomb.

Candidate McCain says that the embassy to Israel should be in Jerusalem.

Candidate Bush said the same thing, and we've been waiting 8 years for him to deliver on that promise with no string attached.

Because the Jerusalem Consulate is geared towards Arab matters, that essentially makes the embassy to the Palestinians in... Jerusalem.

The State Department has essentially done the opposite of the will of the president, our representatives, and America.

McCain has promised, but I have zero confidence that he will make good on that promise.

I'm no businessman, but I am going to the Astros game today at 13:00.

I put in for the afternoon off a while back, and it's just a 10 block walk.

Thursdays are good for this kind of thing.

I have no idea where I'm going to sit. I figure I'll just walk up to the box office and see what's available.

Maybe I'll sit in the far bleachers. Maybe I'll sit along one of the baselines.

Perhaps by going to the game, some businessman will walk up to me and say "You do not look like a businessman. How would you like to be a businessman?"

A guy can dream, can't he? (As long as it's not Marketing or Sales, of course. I may be evil, but I still have a soul... somewhere.)

In the off chance that it's a sell-out, well, I can just take the train to the museum district and wander the art museums. MFA is free on Thursdays, you know.

What's the deal with HELP!!!! and WHAT DID YOU DO???? and I AM SCREWED! and IT IS BROKEN! and NO! NO! NO! and MY BUSINESS IS RUINED! as subject lines of trouble tickets?

I've seen all of those and more. Many actually were just solved with a simple reboot, and the others took about 2 minutes of research to resolve.

Not much fancier than a Google search or hitting the F1 key or clicking the Help link.

Instead of panicking and lashing out, more folks need to light incense and think.

All that a panicked subject line does is get the tech nervous, riled up, or both.

When in doubt, use The Marko Ramius Principle: "Most things in here don't react too well to bullets."

Give us a summary in 80 characters what it is, what's it doing, then expand in the ticket.

Believe me, if it's a simple issue, we'll spot it in the summary and get it done *fast*.

Otherwise, well, HELP!!! might take a while, and IT IS BROKEN! for a bit longer.

Yeah, tickets are supposed to be hit from oldest to newest.

However, as the triage guy, I tend to scrape from the newest to make sure no simple easy-peasy ones don't end up gathering moss.

I also tend to scrape around the oldest to see if something's been missed in the responses.

It helps when the subject line attracts my eye with a specific issue I can quickly check my notes for and resolve.

If I see HELP!!!!!! it's like a hole in the screen. I quickly slide past and hit those saying "License Issue With CPanel" or "Please add this RNDS Record."

It's a catch-22 to some... if you know what you're doing, you'd do it yourself. If you don't know what you're doing, you can't label the request right.

Shucky darn, eh.

Okay, so sometimes I'm quick to suggest a reboot of a server.

However, there's times when the sucker is down and down hard and requires a reboot.

Some customers don't want a reboot for any reason whatsoever. They're of a belief that a server can stay up for years without a reboot.

Yes, that's true. If they're well-tuned, well-maintained, patched and monitored frequently, and so on.

Joe Blow who doesn't know what resolv.conf does ain't gonna get those Methuselah-like uptimes, and the iron box is gonna freeze now and then.

There are times when a server needs to have a reboot. Resisting that need is like making your Sim City drone stand in a bathroom prison without a toilet.

Drone. Gonna. Go. Kaboom.

From The Last Starfighter:

Lord Kril: Damage report!
Kodan Officer: Guidance system out. Auxiliary steering out.
Lord Kril: Divert! Divert!
Kodan Officer: She won't answer the helm! We're locked into the moon's gravitational pull. What do we do?
[sound of Lord Kril's eyepiece swinging over left eye]
Lord Kril: We die.

Oh, and when a reboot is needed, don't just throw in a ticket that says a subject line of HELP!!!! and then a scream about you losing thousands of dollars an hour.

Instead, save some time with an attempt to power-cycle the server... then issue a manual reboot request... and then ask for a follow-up.

If you panic, you will actually get stuck in a queue that ends up being swept by me, and I've been known to miss a needed reboot when someone's just srceaming I AM LOSING THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS A DAY! and MY FAMILY IS LEAVING ME! and ALL MY CUSTOMERS ARE SCREAMING AT ME!

I don't think Babelfish has "I need a reboot" in your language translating to those phrases, eh.

Keep a level head.
Don't panic.
Ask for what you need.

And if you don't know what you need, take up farming or run for public office.

Yeah, I had to post that at IMAO.

Best reaction so far: "I guess Hell was expanding their Sunday morning lineup."

Wow. Lots of righteous indignation over in the comments of IMAO.

Classic.

Oh well. Deleting post, and let's just bring it back home:

Congratulations to History According To Bob for reaching 1,000 episodes.

Thank you, Chris Doelle, for telling me to listen to that podcast oh so long ago.

It's been worth the download and listen every time.

That's what the guys on the radio were calling it.

Thirteen to nothing.

The Astros are racing to the basement once again.

I've been thinking of it.

Especially after this guy has asked three times in ten minutes for a Manual Reboot.

Never mind that after the first time, a manual reboot ticket was opened for him.

We are some kind of elevator button in the lobby... STAB STAB STAB STABBY STAB STAB STAB now now now now STAB STAB now now STAB STAB.

Sheesh.

"Multiple tickets asking for a server to be rebooted may, in fact, have the reboot technicians crash their carts into each other, and your server will be physically damaged by shrapnel and biomass splash."

I am always reminded of the Impatient Cow joke when this happens.

If I had my voice this morning, I'd scream.

If I had my belt this morning, I'd take it off and beat this guy in effigy using a chair.

If I had a hammer, well... I'd hammer in the morni-

Oops. Broke into song there for a moment.

So, there's reports of a ceasefire from Gaza.

Never mind that it's really one of those hudnas, which means the terrorists will just stockpile weapons, smuggle more materials in from Egypt with Egyptian military help, focus on their production methods, and prepare for escalating the attack on Sderot's women and children at some point.

None of the rot in Gaza society or governance will be cleaned up. The infection remains.

It will only be a matter of time before some "mystery" group launches rockets at Sderot.

Never mind that the materials and training and transportation and personnel will come from Hamas itself. Or Fateh. Or Islamic Jihad. The faces on the cameras will say "mystery group" or "new group" and the dumbfucks at the UN and EU and even the State Department will believe them.

Until Hamas' leadership and its "professional" class talent of bombmakers, teachers, technicians, and mouthpieces are wiped out, this crap will continue.

Perhaps, along with them, the apologists among Western society could do with a thorough disinfection.

There's a line between fixing a technical problem and administering a customer's server.

It is not a fine line. It's not even a fuzzy line.

It's a blood-soaked No Man's Land of a line where customers face off with Technicians every day.

Every so often, a customer who is way over their head technically will reach into their arsenal and dig out The Business Speech.

There's an unlimited number of versions of this speech, but in the end it boils down to:

"I am a businessman, not a technician. I am trying to run a business. I do not understand anything you are telling me. I pay you to do this. Fix it for me. And do it for free."

I do not call it an Argument because it is not an argument in the slightest. It is, in the end, a speech. A gambit. A ploy.

An admission.

Let's take the example of a person getting into the business of being a cab driver.

They buy a cab. They paint it yellow. They get it stenciled. They put in all the electronics needed for fare-keeping. They add a protective shield between the seats. And they stick up an air freshener.

Then, they dial the car manufacturer and bitch them out because the car won't start.

"Did you put gas in it?"
"No. Do I have to? I thought you did that for me?"

What would you say at that point if they pulled out The Businessman Speech?

Or...

"Did you put gas in it?"
"Gas is expensive. I paid a lot for this car and to get it ready for business. I shouldn't have to pay more. I am running a business and I need to feed my family."

What would you say at that point if they pulled out The Businessman Speech?

Or...

"Did you put gas in it?"
"Yes. And now my back seat stinks of gasoline."

What would you say at that point if they pulled out The Businessman Speech?

Or...

"Did you put gas in it?"
"Yes. Now teach me how to drive."

What would you say at that point if they pulled out The Businessman Speech?

Abraham Lincoln once said that if he was tasked with chopping down a tree in six hours, he'd spend the first four sharpening the axe.

When you have a job to do, plan and prepare your tools before starting it. It will go much easier and you'll have more success.

I guess things have changed since Lincoln's day, because there's a hell of a lot of dull edges whacking away at trees.

And Brad Lidge 2.0 put the gun to his head and blew himself away in the tenth.

Highlight of the game was Luke Scott going yard on his old team.

Sometimes, I wish I had access to exact figures of certain things.

It would be nice to have a count of the number of remaining rock-bottom ultra-cheap legacy accounts and a graph showing that number going down over time.

I do know that these folks end up using more of their "fair share" of our attention span for what they bring in. One phone call, and any revenue from their service is gone in the wind.

I also know that despite quite a lot of them being nice folks, there's a few that have an inflated sense of entitlement. Whether it's their mailer program checking email once a minute or expecting these things to perform like clustered million dollar blade solutions with real-time failovers and backups, they're trying to treat a Yugo like a limo.

Maybe the original owner of the company gave 'em too much leeway when it came to their verbally beating the crap out of us over flaky hardware and non-existent maintenance practices. most of which have either been cleaned up or automated as much as possible.

But most of all, I think it's just that the company's been moving out of that lowest-end niche and sliding into enterprise managed solutions. These folks are expecting things to stay the same forever, and the gap between what they want and what they'll get is growing. They feel abandoned... frustrated... angry...

They don't need to be.

The folks who were with the dialup part of the business had that sense to them, but over time a lot of them were ready to move up to faster solutions. Those that wanted to or had to stick with dialup, well, they got handed off to a company that's still in the dialup market, and they're being taken care of pretty well until the point they are ready for or have access to broadband solutions for Internet access.

The same almost went for these hosting legacy folks, too. There's some really good resellers out there who excel in this market, and if these folks shopped around and did their homework, they'd switch to those folks in a heartbeat.

An effort was made to move a lot of those folks over to one of those companies, but someone screwed up big time and they came right back, even more frustrated and confused and angry.

Every time I see a ticket with more four-letter words and exclamation points than I can count, I just want to whisper in their ear Why have you not moved to X on your own?

When they growl "I'm losing hundreds of dollars of money an hour while this is down? or similar rants, I wonder who's giving them the business advice to stick with their current provider when there's ones that provide excellent service, excellent options, excellent uptime, and just all-around excellence.

Who's telling them to sit on their butts and keep taking the hits?

I'm not angry, mind you. Just kinda... sad? Frustrated?

On the other hand, every time I see a request to suspend or cancel one of those accounts, I ping that domain to see where they're headed off to.

The results often show where they're now hosted. I usually nod and think "Those are good folks. They'll get taken care of for a long time by them. Good luck to 'em."

(And if I see they're selling cool things like scented candles or candied nuts or other things I want, well, I fire up Paypal and buy something from them as a kind of Bon Voyage/Good Luck present.)

I saw a thank you note from one of them the other day. They thanked us for helping get their online business started, they grew a bit, they saw we weren't selling those accounts anymore, the writing was on the wall, they got the hint, they hit the books, and now they're running their own site with room to grow.

Yeah, they all can't be like them. In fact, I'm shocked this one did what they did. These accounts were targeted at people who didn't know what they were doing, so just fire up FrontPage and get a simple site running for cheap.

You don't expect folks like that to hit the books and learn the advanced stuff.

But when it does, well, it's kinda cool.

And so it goes.

I subscribe to the United Nations News Center Bulletins just to see exactly how our tax dollars are being spent by the finest, best-educated anti-Semites on the planet that money can buy.

So when I see the headline:

PALESTINIANS HIT BY HIGHER FOOD PRICES AND FALLING INCOMES, UN REPORT SAYS
New York, Jun 19 2008 1:00PM

I think "There's food riots throughout the Third World and food prices are higher everywhere due to bad harvests, increased fuel prices for agricultural machinery, and the diversion of crops for use with biodiesel. That's what this is about, right?"

Apparently not:

Nearly 40 per cent of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and the
West Bank do not have access to sufficient food, a rise of four per cent from 2006,
according to a joint report issued by three United Nations agencies.

The report says that the main causes of food insecurity in the occupied Palestinian
territories are �rooted in the military and administrative measures imposed by the
Israeli occupation � closure regime, permits, destruction of assets � as well as
settlement expansion and derived infrastructure multiplication � access to land and
water and the construction of bypass roads.�

Looking through the rest of the article, there's absolutely no acknowledgment of the global food price rise. Israel is blamed for everything.

Oh, and if that wasn't enough:

Rising fuel and commodity prices are also making it more difficult to deliver aid.

Apparently, the Jews are to blame for rising fuel prices, too.

Never mind that fuel prices are rising everywhere across the globe due to overspeculation, overdemand, lack of refinery capacity, OPEC collusion to control production, overuse of inefficient technologies by countries that cannot drill for their own supply due to environmental blocks...

Or the fact that the fuel terminal is constantly under attack by Hamas's proxy groups, preventing shipment of fuel. And when shipments do get through, they are hijacked from the humanitarian uses to Hamas' terror activities.

It's amazing how a multi-department report from the UN just focuses like a laser beam at their favorite target.

Maybe instead of smuggling explosives, guns, and terrorists through those tunnels under Rafah, the Egyptian Army should be helping Hamas smuggle food and solar cells for generating power?

Nah.

A Yeshiva student made his own rocket at tried to shoot it at the Palesitnian Space Program...

A student from the Od Yosef Hai Yeshiva built a crude rocket and fired it from a nearby hill at a Palestinian village in the West Bank, security officials said Friday. No one was wounded.

Among those suspected of involvement in the incident was the yeshiva's head, Rabbi Itzik Shapira, the Ma'ariv newspaper reported.

Members of the 'rocket launching cell' reportedly tried to cover up their actions, and several minutes after they fired the rocket they told residents of the Yitzhar settlement, where the seminary is situated, that an experiment was being carried out and not to be alarmed when they heard an explosion.

The rocket - which consisted of a launching device, a pipe and explosives - landed in an open area between Yitzhar and the Palestinian village, meters away from a Breslov Hasid, who happened to be praying there.

Um... Gaza's to the West, not the East.

And next time, fill it with food. Say it's a rapid-response food delivery platform or something.

Unless your therapist uses a trouble ticket system of managing his patients, there's never any reason to have "I am very upset!" as the subject line of a trouble ticket.

Summarize the problem, otherwise you're just compounding it.

Or, as Uncle Guido says, "If you're drowning, wave your open hands around. Shooting the bird just makes it harder to grab your hand and pull your ass out of the water."

This one says Important!

I read it. He's looking for something he could get by clicking on the Help link less than three character-widths away from the admin link he gives.

*shrug* (Douchebag.)

Just as Hamas has manufactured a food and fuel crisis while suckering the media with "candles in darkened rooms at high noon" photo opportunities, anybody believing this ploy by the Iranian Government to sucker the media into backing their initiative for nuclear power?

Iranians on Saturday were told to cut their electricity consumption by 10 percent or face daily power cuts because of a severe drought and low production at hydroelectric power plants.

Residents of the capital Tehran could face up to four hours of blackouts each day, officials said according to media reports.

"If consumers do not cut down consumption by 10 percent, we will have blackouts until the end of the summer," Deputy Energy Minister Mohammad Ahmadian told Fars news agency.

Newspapers published a table by the state electricity company dividing the sprawling capital of 12 million into 11 zones, with each area to face from two-hour-long power cuts twice a day from Saturday.

If Iran were to capture and use the natural gas they vent during oil exploration, they'd have more than enough power for their needs.

But then, you can't conceal a plan to destroy Israel with nuclear weapons with such a program, can you?

The Astros are on the bottom of the NL Central, heading to the bottom of the NL quickly.

The Seattle Mariners are 26 and 47, so it will take some extra-special effort by the Astros to catch up to them.

Have faith. If you set a watermark, the Astros will find a way to sink below it.

Ali Sina sure knows how to rock the boat:

Through the Faith Freedom Web site, Sina lists canonical references to Muhammad's actions and offers $50,000 to anyone who can disprove Sina's charge that Islam's prophet was "a narcissist, a misogynist, a rapist, a pedophile, a lecher, a torturer, a mass murderer, a cult leader, an assassin, a terrorist, a mad man and a looter." Respondents relentlessly attack Sina's motives, but none has won the prize.

Sounds like the makings of a seriously weird game show to me.

Oh. Wait. They already had "You Bet Your Life."

Robert Mugabe isn't content to be one of the bloodiest dictators of the 20th Century, but is hoping for a whack at establishing himself early on as the bloodiest dictator of the 21st:

Robert Mugabe, the 84-year-old leader with a stranglehold on power in Zimbabwe since 1980, has remained defiant in the face of harsh criticism, vowing recently that "only God" can remove him from office.

The veteran president was almost certainly handed another victory on Sunday when his longtime rival, opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai, announced he was pulling out of this week's run-off election.

Through most of his 28 years in power, the former guerrilla leader has faced little serious political opposition, but results from the March 29 first round vote showed he finished second behind Tsvangirai.

Easily solved - wait for his inauguration party and JDAM it.

Anybody who's partying with him that night certainly deserves to go to Hell with him.

From April 25, 2005:

Some may hold up George Carlin as the example a master of the profane craft, but these days I disagree. Sure, once, Carlin's material was absolutely flawless. I studied the albums and the HBO specials like an Islamic Scholar picks apart the Koran. The tone. The timing. The expressions. A way of expressing himself physically that puts Marcel Marceau to shame.

These days with George, well, it's all profanity. And it's bitter. Really bitter. Somewhere, George lost the balance between humor and anger, and the profanity just greased that slide.

The headlines say that George Carlin died today in Los Angeles.

To me, he died a long time ago. George Carlin the wit, the rubber-faced social commentator who say shit that nobody else would admit they saw and point it out in so many voices became nothing but a loud, profane old fart.

The bazooka-barfing of my Cabo's fish sandwich this morning is causing my Tom Waits concert afterglow to take a hit.

Sure, at some points, Tom was a bit muddy, but that's his thing, right?

The nasty pink stuff is not winning the battle quickly, so I may end up crawling into a corner of the bathroom and declaring Tuesday to be my Monday.

I clicked on "Calendar" at George Carlin's website.

That's one seriously busy goddamned corpse.

(You think they're giving a discount for the tickets?)

The complex sent out a note that they're going to start having the city trap cats wandering around outside.

I saw two Tuxes and a grey-and-white discussing this under a patio chair by the pool on Friday.

Nardo prefers going around naked-necked, but if he's going to go out on patrol now and then, he's getting his collar back.

But just for the afternoons and evenings. When it's come-back-inside time, the collar can come off.

I figure with July 4th coming up, he can wear the American Flag collar.

He lost his Mugatu piano-key collar a while back. Maybe Derek Zoolander stole it.

Try to guess what country this group is targeting:

After the coalitions of cities against racism created in Europe, Africa, Latin America and the Asia-Pacific region, several municipalities in the Arab world (Casablanca, Doha, Essaouira, Cairo, Nouakchott, Rabat, Tangiers) have also decided to build a network to combat racism, discrimination, xenophobia and intolerance.

On 25 June 2008, representatives of these municipalities will formalize the coalition at a ceremony to be held in Casablanca (Morocco), the city designated as "leader" of the network. They will sign a joint declaration and commit themselves to act at the local level on the basis of a Ten Point Action Plan which takes into account the forms of discrimination specific to their region.

Golly, gee... a bunch of Arab countries coming together and throwing words like racism, discrimination, xenophobia and intolerance around.

Who are they going to point the finger at?

Come on... this shouldn't be tough...

All these acronyms to remember and organizations to hijack with their agenda... it must be tiresome. They should just found "The League of Anti-Semitic Nations" and be done with it.

Where to put the headquarters?

Well, Gaza, of course. Let 'em eat their own dogfood and hang out with the Hamassholes they spend so much time supporting in the media.

We handle reboot requests before anything else.

Sure, people should be asking for reboot requests with the power-cycling utlity or the manual reboot request form, but if one comes up in the normal ticket stream, it needs handing off before anything else.

So when someone plays off of this and they tag their ticket "Reboot" or "Reboot Request" when it's really something else, well, that kind of pisses me off.

It's the "Me first! Me first! Me first!" game that they play with calling in right after the moment they submit a trouble ticket.

Reminds me of this woman named Caroline from back at the public television station I used to work at. When I was going around solving a stack of issues, she'd do her best to grab me and drag me into her simple solved-by-F1 or solved-by-asking-the-secretary-who-knew-her-shit-down-cold issues.

"I'm in the middle of a run, but if you toss me a note with the issue or have the secretary send a note in for you, I'll be on it as soon as I can," I'd say.

So, she'd dash off the note really fast, grab me again, and tell me to check my list.

You know, standing right there. With the magical invisible wireless laptop I had on me back in 1993.

Oh well. Time to hit the queue again.

I've said before that every time I see someone closing out a tenbuck account and moving to a service with that as their dedicated focus, I wish them well.

Every now and then, there's someone who gets their tenbuck account canceled for nonpayment, and they call in all hot and desperate to get it back.

Those folks, I pity.

I want to tell them Haven't you noticed we've stopped selling these?

I want to tell them You can do so much better somewhere else.

I want to tell them No.

I used to have a few pages of notes telling people how to do things with those sites, but I got rid of them when they were no longer sold.

I figured "We'll end of life these things soon enough."

I guess I figured wrong.

I'm reading through this long, angry email from someone threatening to cancel their tenbuck account, saying how wonderful it was before and how lousy it is now.

The mail is over 2 years old. I have a few more from the person in the archives of the support mailbox.

They're still there, thrashing around in their shallow pool, trying to check their email every thirty seconds while "managing" their site with an outdated version of FrontPage.

I had this dream that the competition was chipping in to a fund that would pay these people to keep their accounts going in an attempt to wear down and annoy techs so they'd quit and go work for them.

Yeah, it was kinda funny.

But in the event that it's real, well...

A year ago, I signed up for Twitter.

Then, when Twitter was having problems, everybody signed up for Jaiku.

When Jaiku had problems with the rush, people ran back to Twitter.

Then there was some other site. People rushed there.

Again and again, Seesmic, Ooovoo, Utterz... people rush around.

Now, the "in" place to rush to is Plurk. People are Twittering about Plurk and Plurking about Twitter and Utterzing about moving from one to the other and Seesmicing videos of it all.

Me, I'm sticking with what I've got for now.

Let me know when people rush to some place that has a business plan, solid backers in the online industry like Google or AT&T or Yahoo or MS.

Or, for that matter, when enough of the people I follow are on that site so that I need to pay attention to it.

Not want. Need.

Of course, if there's something someone knows I need, they'll send it to me. Vomiting it up on some Web 2.0 feed isn't exactly a way to guarantee my attention will be caught.

Then I'll think about some migration.

It's got me thinking of a story... here's what I have so far:

CAKE

Mom was busy in the kitchen. Little Susie asked her why.

"It's Baking A Cake Day," said Mom. "That's why I am baking a cake."

"Why is there a Baking A Cake Day, Mommy?" asked Little Susie.

"To celebrate Cake-Baking! By baking a cake!"

"Why do we celebrate cake-baking?" whined Little Susie. "Why not pie-baking?"

"You're not an unpatriotic pie-lover are you?" asked Mom. "This is Baking A Cake Day!"

Little Susie was about to ask what was wrong with pie, but her mother had already shoved her out the door.

"Go play outside!" she shouted. "And come back in when you're ready for some cake."

Susie walked through the trees to the neighborhood creek and made mud pies with her friends.

But she came home caked with dirt.

Yesterday's story was about Web 2.0 as well, I suppose.

And "Little Susie" is inspired by Kevin Swearingen's old Flash cartoons.

In my mind, the Houston Astros are a team of 24 players and then there's this guy named Valverde that they lent a uniform to and ask him now and then to fill in for someone.

I should go back through his appearances, but Saves are not a good measure of his performance, I think.

When you're up three and you call on a guy who's your closer, you should expect to win with three, maybe two.

Winning by one because your closer guarantees a run or two damage before finishing things off is not good.

Especially when you've played in a few 1-run games and come out on the wrong end of those.

The Astros had this problem with Lidge, and all they did was replace Lidge with Lidge 2.0.

If you're seeing Postseason with this team, better get your eyes checked.

As for Matsui, did Uncle Drayton completely forget what he learned from the Bagwell fiasco?

After getting rooked for a year and an option because Bagwell insisted on going to Spring Training, he gets suckered into three years for a known damaged goods package?

Michael Bourn had better turn into the Second Coming of Christ, because Ed Wade's going to need that to balance Matsui and Valverde.

Throw pitches, not general managers:

Already upset that he was demoted from the Astros' starting rotation to the bullpen, Shawn Chacon was suspended indefinitely Wednesday night after a heated exchange turned violent with general manager Ed Wade an hour before the Astros played the Texas Rangers.

...

“He started yelling and cussing," Chacon said of Wade. "I’m sitting there and I said to him very calmly, ‘Ed, you need to stop yelling at me. Then I stood up and said 'you better stop yelling at me.' I stood up. He continued and was basically yelling and stuff and was like, ‘You need to (expletive) look in the mirror.’ So at that point I lost my cool and I grabbed him by the neck and threw him to the ground. I jumped on top of him because at that point I wanted to beat his (butt). Words were exchanged.”

Matsui and Chacon are two strikes against Ed Wade.

What will be Strike Three?

I've noticed a rash of tickets complaining about not being able to access email on various wireless handheld devices and phones.

So, I test the account with a quick telnet to port 110.

It responds.

And that's the end of my diagnosis.

You see, if the mail server's responding for a simple POP command, it's as good as it's going to get from us.

We don't care how you access your email. As long as the server's working and responding, all's cool with us.

We don't know the ins and outs of every mail client out there. And if you're accessing through an ISP that makes you jump through hoops, well, congratulations and limber up because you've got a bit of jumping in your future.

This one customer writes in that he's tried everything and that he can't afford an admin to solve his problem for him, so can we do it for free?

I look up the phone he's got. I look up his invoices. I do a rough guesstimate of his calling plan.

It's like having a Ferrari and whining that you can't afford a car wash and an oil change, the price of gas is too high, so can the mechanics just all get in the back and push him everywhere?

I understand the concept of "going the extra distance" but if you give an inch, they will take a whole fucking football field and make you their bitch.

I had a dream where a guy was walking his dog down the street and it took a huge shit.

He started to lead the dog away.

"Aren't you going to pick that up?" I asked him.

He stopped and looked at me with a disgusted look. "I'm not a dog person." he said. "I just pay the food and vet bills."

I grab him by the back on the neck, shove his face in the shit, and tell him he can either pick it up or lick it up.

Every so often, someone writes a ticket or calls in with a problem and they can't quite describe it.

So, we ask for details.

"I don't know. I'm not a computer person."

I'd love to see the look on this person's face when they go in for surgery, they're on the table, and the surgeon says "Oh, I'm not a medical person."

You're in the computer and hosting business, dude.

You're taking people's money to resell to them.

Learn, hire someone who knows, or give up.

"I just pay the bills."

I guess you'll be glad to pay the bill our billable services team is about to send you for fixing this shit.

"I pay for this server, you're technical support, so fix it."

That last one's classic. Imagine telling your car dealer's mechanic that when you wreck your car and tell him to fix it for free.

So. Not. Happening.

"I hired an admin, but he sucked, so I fired him."

Hire another one. Good luck!

"I can't reach my admin."

Sucks to be you. Good luck!

Old Spice has determined that Houston is the 7th sweatiest city in the country.

If Carlos Lee actually bothered to run out grounders, maybe we'd be second or third.

Someone told me today "I'm a client of a customer and they said whenever he's not available to call you."

I was tempted to ask for the IP, look it up in the customer database, and hand the account over to Legal for violating the Terms Of Service.

Sadly, we don't enforce TOS and AUP that strictly. When it comes to customers using their clients as battering rams and cannon-fodder.

Then there's the people who say they'll hire us if we solve their problem for them.

Also a TOS/AUP violation. But if we report that kind of thing, it won't be used to wipe out a slimy double-dealer.

Then there's the ones who say if we help them break into their site to get all their stuff back, they'll buy a server from us.

That's like a bank robber asking for a loaner getaway car that they'll promise to buy with the money they get out of the vault.

Best of all, it's the folks who play dumb and don't know who they host with.

"Who do you pay?"

And they still aren't sure.

If you have no idea who you are paying, you have some serious issues well beyond technical support.

Happy birthday, you old retired terrorist who made it that much easier for the rotten world to embrace a blood-soaked scuzzball like Yasser Arafat.

Now take a deep breath, make a wish, and blow out the flaming tires your ex-wife has tossed around the necks of your political opponents.

Going back through some YouTube movies today.

Every so often, I catch her out of the corner of my eye.

Not as much as right after.

Ghosts tend to do that. They fade over time.

But every now and then, when you think you need them, they are there.

I'll be fine.

The cable was out yesterday because TVMax converted the building to digital and left the job of rolling out the converter boxes unfinished.

They postponed the rollout before, and when she called this week, they postponed it again.

Or so Melissa said.

She was looking at the wrong list, apparently. And the permission slip for the installers must have magically vanished or slipped under a desk somewhere.

Wonderful.

Their fliers said nobody would lose service, but we all know that kind of stuff is a crock of shit.

So, instead of watching the game, we had the radio on.

And since it was a local game, that meant having to suffer Milo Hamilton's blithering senile sponsor-filled comments, whether or not they had anything to do with the game.

What was Harry Caray's legacy?

Take Me Out To The Ballgame?
Getting hammered on Bud during the game?
Holy cow!

No. It was giving folks like Milo Hamilton the idea that they can keep calling games well past their prime, going for the nostalgia at the expense of the game.

I have a request for his crew - for the next game, turn him around so his back faces the field.

I'd like to see if it makes a difference in the quality of his performance.

You know, I should have learned Spanish so that I could listen to those guys. They can at least call the game.

Today, the cable should return. Not sure if it will... TVMax always finds ways to fuck up that stuff.

Whether or not it's back, I'm not listening to the game.

I'd rather hear three hours of intense, loud static.

For the good of the local economy and party planners, please retire, Milo.

A whole bunch of broadcasting talent is probably stacked up behind you, growing more and more frustrated at the lack of opportunities at the next level up because you're a doddering, blithering dam in the stream.

Move on, man. Move on.

If I have to listen to your effluence one more time, I'm calling for a boycott of every corporation you mention on air.

And that includes the goddamned bandsaws.

Mahmoud Zahar has pledged to arrest Palestinian terrorists based in Gaza who fire on Israel.

Actually, that got mis-translated from the original Arabic statement. What he really said was: "We're giving them a free ride to the weapons locker at the police station so they can go back out and launch more mortars and rockets."

Apparently, Reuters and AP think you can cram that into a headline with the word "arrest."

And...

Zahar claimed that his organization has already arrested a number of gunmen who fired rockets towards the Karni crossing and trucks bringing goods to the crossing. He added that Gaza residents had agreed to turn in family members who breach the truce agreement.

I can imagine the conversation now: "Quit shooting that the swag and fire at the Jews, dammit."

Apparently, the pressure is on to join Plurk.

Twitter's constantly borked or hamstrung, making conversation difficult.

I don't have time for 10,000 Web 2.0 apprivations.

I ignore MySpace. I let Facebook run on autopilot.

As for Plurk., I have 70 fans there so far. I'll fire things up full-speed if that gets to 100.

After suffering Milo Hamilton on Friday, there was no way we'd suffer him Saturday night.

The cable dude showed up around noon, got the box set, and we went shopping when the Mrs. woke up... around... um... 5.

She sleeps really late on weekends.

Anyway, we bought the Samsung 37" 1080 with ten bajillion HDMI inputs.

Also plugged the sound into the stereo. Not Dolby 5.1 surround, but we're not at that stage yet, okay?

The old DVD player plugs in just fine.

Found an issue with the cable box. When I removed all the channels we don't have or don't want to have cluttering up our lineup, it reordered the numbers in sequence that doesn't match the cable guide anymore.

Ugh. Royal pain.

Sometimes, "smart" technology ain't so smart.

So, when you read the "Berkman’s double lifts Astros to 11-10 win" headline, you think "Oh, Berkman came in with 9-10 and made it 11-10." right?

Wrong.

Doug Brocail (3-3) got two outs for the victory. Jose Valverde gave up a solo homer to Mike Lowell in the ninth, but struck out Jason Varitek to secure his 20th save.

Valverde's gotten 1-run saves in his last 4 opportunities, but three of them involved bleeding extra runs.

Yeah yeah yeah... Qualls took a punch from Varitek on the 24th that blew a save, I know. But I'd rather see Qualls in an Astros uniform than Lidge 2.0, okay?

This is not the kid of closer you need with a 1-run game on the line, the heart of the order coming to the plate.

The equivalent question in admin-speak is likely "What is the path to /etc/resolv.conf?"

Sometimes, I wonder.

Did this person mean to ask something else and just got garbled in translation, or are they really this... dim?

Either way, they'll just keep coming back for more, over and over, unable to effectively communicate their needs.

I've seen it happen before, over and over.

(Looks at the insurance card.)

Oh well.