Rev’s Thought Dump

Had a conversation with my coworker about customer service asking for passwords on the phone. It devolved into us taking turns in creating the fictitious one side phone support call transcribed below. At the time we laughed our asses off.

Excuse me sir i’ll need the social and cc numbers for you and your extended family in order to fix that site problem…. in fact just mail a check to this po box.

Do you have a daughter? Uh huh?  Is she cute?  uh huh… 16?  Yeah… yeah, I was afraid of that sir.  Yeah she made need to fly out here and stay with me for a few weeks while we get this fixed.

no the blank checkis just for identity validation purposes…. yes you must sign it

Noooo…. if you write VOID on it then it’s VOID and I can’t….. erm…. use it to fix the problem.

Are you trying to void your identity sir …. i beleive that may be illegal…

Something tells me, you’re the kind of sick terrorist bastard type that rips the tag off their matress.  Am I right, sir?  AM I RIGHT?! I’m sorry sir, but to continue working with you despite my moral judgement I’m going to need you to send me a $150 star bucks card.  yes, yeah, that’s right sir.  Just send it along with your daughter.

I’m going to need you to make several deposits to this account in order to establish a “Freedom of  Information Transaction Channel” - no don’t worry the money will never really l;eave your account - it wil;l just appear that way for a little while…

We are sorry for the increased security sir - unfortnately these measures have become nessacary in the post 9/11 world…

Of course, sir, everyone in the know will deny all knowledge.  The is triple top secret stuff, you understand.

you are very lucky to have been selected for this special patriot plus program.

To decline our offer would surely indicate terrorist ties and you WOULD be subject to a full body cavity search as well as complete IRS audit.

Ahh, bein’ nutty is fun.  I <3 imagination.

You may have seen them.  Kind of a money making take on the community bicycles in Portland.  All around town (some towns) there are cars parked in special little spots with catchy little stickers. The idea is you can pay a monthly/annual fee and pick up one of these little cars and drive all about the city.  Then you just drop it off at an assigned parking spot and you’re done.  No messy insurance. No maintenance or car payments. Sounds like a good plan, eh?  But I wonder…

While driving home today I had one of these little ZipCars pull out in front of me and then proceed to putt along at 25mph.  This got me thinking.  This person went out and rented this car.  Supposedly they don’t need a car full time.  Just here and there once and a while. Where as, I own a car.  I’ve had a one since I got my license.  I’ve been driving almost daily ( though I bus to work now) for the last 20 years almost.  I have honed my skill to Ronin-car-chase-scene levels of awesome.  I am dedicated to being on my game and knowing my car and how it performs. Is it possible that these every-other-Sunday drivers are actually a danger?

I’m not trying to say hurrah for me for driving my car in a time of environmental Fail.  But I have a bit of a problem with creating a whole class of perpetual student drivers.  If you’re not going to drive a car, don’t drive a car. What do you think?

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Auto hackery

Trying out the flickr posting option. Get a load of this car that I caught outside the office.

A brief quote from LifeHacker on the next version of Windows:

Microsoft says the next version of Windows - now known as “Windows 7″ - will ship in about 3 years.

So.. what? They’re going to call it… OS VII?

My plans are in full swing. In the office today I heard people talking about Moon Pie’s out of the blue. I hadn’t even tested my theory on anyone at work yet. And these people didn’t read my blog. Hrmmm…

Now I know there’s a name for the idea that once you start thinking about something you notice it everywhere. Like when you’re thinking of buying a new car you see that particular model all over the city.

But I’m going to shurk that idea for the moment. I’ll imagine that my choice of the Moon Pie was vague enough not to normally pop up randomly like so many cars on the road.

Oh.. and MonoCast Episode 4 is out! Check it out.

I’m going to interview Miguel tonight about the new Novell/Microsoft blood pact. We’ll see what’s what.

“I wish my lawn was emo. Then it would cut itself.” — Alan McGovern

Ever been walking along and you think of something totally obscure from your past.. like an old tv show or something… and then suddenly everyone you know is talking about it? And suddenly it’s going to be rereleased to DVD and the latest movie to be remade.

Isn’t it odd how we all seem to think the same things at around the same time. I don’t know whether it’s a product of carefully implemented marketing or what. But it’s a creepy feeling.

So, here’s my idea. Let’s start our own Meme. A MoonPie Meme.

Everyone reading this. Make it a point to go out and get some MoonPies. Then eat it were someone can see you. At work.. on the bus. Maybe even comment how good it is. But don’t let on anymore beside that.

Let’s see how long it takes for MoonPies to suddenly become a national hit again.

Interesting. No?

Mmmmm this is a good MoonPie

Okay.. Aeon Flux.. Aeon Sux. There were loop holes you could drive a Mac truck through. And I don’t know about you. But when I’m sent to kill someone the first thing I want to do is have some hot “I want to kill you” sex. And then there’s always the “Oh my, you’re so shot and so sexy” snogging. Yum.

I kept churning it all in my head “What’s wrong with this movie? Budget? Dialog? Concept?” I narrowed it down *laugh* The concept is fairly sound. It needed better writing, better direction, and a budget. It was interesting to see Jonny Lee Miller do something though. I commented that Angelina Jolie must’ve really chewed him up. And they really should’ve kept more inline with Chung’s original work.

Stacia also noted how you can tell a good actor from a bad in a scene between Miller and Pete Postlethwaite where Postelthwaite only says “But, the DNA’s good.” and clearly out performs Miller by a mile.

Speaking of Stacia… she got a new hair cut and I have to say she’s a MELF (Mom Everyone’d Like to F…) Uhh yeah…

Anyone at all familiiar with Click Once? I’ve written about it in the past.

At work they’re talking about wanting to be able to PrePatch an install. Basically, if we ship CDs and find issues after they’re sent out they want to ability to have the install process phone home and see if it should update the install files BEFORE installing. Admittedly this sounds kind of odd and when our manager insisted that the Windows install (this actual install of the OS) does this we had to kind of tell him it was apples and oranges.

One of my co-works is all pissed off and insisting that we should put mroe effort into testing rather than band-aiding the issue. While I agree, I’m totally caught up in the puzzle and since I love doing tools, I’m on it.

My solutions is to make the Setup/Launcher a ClickOnce enabled assembly, or more likely the Systems admin tool that I’m working on since the idea is to have it be the center point of the system and to have it push installs out to remote machines. So, if the Admin tool is a ClickOnce application with the actual MSI file and data files as it’s dependent files in the ClickOnce manifest then I can have the install ( and the Admin tool itself ) updated each time it’s run. So before the system is launched the user would have the latest copy of the install.

Justin thinks I’m nuts. That it’s overly complex and not elegant. I’m thinking it’s much more elegant than writing an entire “prepatching” system ourselves. This would solve many issues at once like keeping the users database scripts up-to-date and such. I’m setting to work on my proof-of-concept now.

I’m waffling so much on the sale of the bus that I should run for office. “I’m selling it” “No, I’m not” “Sorry, yes I am” “maybe” “Okay, no”

The best firework display on the Fourth was when the neighbors mortar fell over and began shooting multi colored fire balls around the neighborhood. I thought I was going to die laughing. A blue fireball bouncing off someone’s car and whizzing up into the air cracks me up. Like Stacia said.. it was like some Harry Potter-esque spell gone bad.

Umm last boring bit… I zoned out on Google Earth this weekend while I was supposed to be reading up on Hidden Markov Models. I hit most of the Russian Naval ports and was just flabbergasted by the number of sunken and abondoned ships. Little fjords full of capsized rusting hulks. Some were just sunken at the docks. I heard it was pretty bad for the Russian Navy after things collapsed. That there were nuclear reactors in subs that were half removed just sitting in dry docks abondoned when everyone walked away. But it’s creepy to see it. It’s like looking down on some post-apocolyptic earth.

And.. I found a Tyhpoon Class sub docked just outside of Archangel! That was pretty cool.

Okay, that is all.

“Dah-ee?”
“Yes?”
*Serious Face* “Do you know dah muffin man?”

My kids are hilarious