The circus is in town!
by Travis on Aug.25, 2008, under General
That’s right folks… with the DNC (that’s the democratic national convention for those of you who are living in a box somewhere) in Denver it has brought all kinds of fun and interesting people to our little part of the world.
Among the list of characters we have on display this week, we have delegates and protesters. While the delegates have their plans pretty much mapped out and the protesters like to think they do, I think we’ll focus on the protesters in this little blog. 🙂
By far these individuals are more fun than a trip to the zoo. Why do I compare it to the zoo? Well, when they get out of hand we throw them in cages too. WOOOHOOO! We’ve even setup a “special” little spot for them in a warehouse just outside of downtown in case we need to throw the whole lot of em in there. Of course, these animals, due to the fact complaining is in their nature, have already starting protesting about the fact we have a little place for them to stay in should they get rowdy. They claim it is crossing the line and impacting on their civil liberties. I say good for the police. 🙂 I mean, these people are out there taking martial arts classes in public parks to “gear up” before their protests. (I’m not kidding, article here) In defense again of the police, the protesters decided to do an unauthorized march yesterday which they didn’t do any mass arrests and showed much restraint. Again, good job guys! (link about march)
Ooo, I just recieved word of excitement! Evidently they just called in for some police reinforcement to resteer of some protesters that marched and deviated into the 16th street mall area. YAY! EXCITEMENT! IGNORANT DRAMA! 🙂
I did actually get a free t-shirt today from Q-Doba. It reads ‘ Burritos for Obama ‘ … it was entertaining.
So Myke and I are scheduling a couple walks a day this week. Preferably before lunch and after lunch to help keep all the free food from sticking to our bellies. 🙂
I’ve come to the conclusion I like it when the circus comes to town. I particularly enjoy when they throw the clowns into the police cars and point guns at people who don’t stop at intersections they’ve closed off so a VIP can roll through in their mini motorcade. This week is going to be fun. *grin*
What I dislike most about my line of work…
by Travis on Aug.21, 2008, under Rants, Tech Stuff
When you tell people the best suggested courses of action to resolve their problems and they don’t want to follow your advice. They instead still want to bitch and complain that your IT department isn’t doing their job right. Can I choke you please?
I mean seriously. What’s the point of having an IT department if you won’t listen to them?
I also love it when you’re told you can’t use a network pipe to do your job, but that’s another story. %(*#)(*%#@)(
*stomp* (whiny voice) I hate Myke Reinhold … 🙂
Corporal Punishment – Discipline or Abuse?
by Travis on Aug.21, 2008, under General, Rants
http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/08/20/corporal.punishment/index.html
Feel free to go read that article if you must but either way my opinion is about to be posted.
Personally, I think these human rights groups need to do us all a favor and move to a little island somewhere that they can hash out their differences while their own children turn into criminals. 🙂
I’m so sick and tired of reading about people whining and complaining and comparing spanking children to ‘beating’ them. PLEASE. There is a HUGE difference between beating your kids abusively and handing them down some discipline via a smack on the rear-end. The same rules should definitely apply at a school as well though.
Beating Kids -> BAD
Whippin some butt -> USEFUL
No wonder this world is so screwed up. There aren’t any painful consequences for your actions when you’re a kid anymore so you don’t think it will ever happen. *rolls eyes*
All these “activists” are the same – they have to have something to complain about… constantly. Just mind your own business and leave people alone. If someone needs to spank their kid to get a point across, let em. Not all kids can be talked out of or convinced with empty threats that ransacking the dvd’s or pouring milk on the floor because it’s ‘fun’ is not okay. Geez.
With all things though, moderation is key. 🙂 ok, so I just laughed a little to myself over that comment but it’s true. A 5 yr old misbehaving suffices just fine with 1-3 pops on the butt. 3 is reserved for something serious and 1 is used for a reminder that *YOU* are the parent and *THEY* are the child.
For the record, my daughter is loved by all, behaves herself, is polite and does what she is told to do 95% of the time. I have NEVER gotten a bad report on her wherever she goes. I can count on one hand how many times she’s been spanked because every time I’ve told her she was getting one, I followed through. Granted she’s spent some serious time in a corner too, but a nose in the corner just doesn’t cut it all the time.
While all kids aren’t a model child like she is and granted my next kid will probably be a tiny terror, consistency is the key. If you punish a child by following through a threat, they get the point otherwise they don’t take you seriously. Most of the time that punishment can be a passive one but sometimes you need to be able to up the consequences a little. Having consistency is key so I’d have to say, what they get at home, they should get at school – minor, put you in the corner… a little more up there, spank em!
If all I had to do was spend some time in the corner for killing someone, the highways would be empty. *big grin* You get my point? Â
For a quality rant on this because i’m too tired/lazy to write one… check out Myke’s take on things – he says it well.
on the list of things not to do on a weekend…
by Travis on Aug.12, 2008, under Tech Stuff
accidently delete your entire photo gallery instead of individual albums photos.
Indeed… I became one of those morons I rant about in the tech world on a daily basis. yay for me! I seriously forgot my helmet. Backups? lol yeah funny thing about those… so lets tell the story. 🙂
You see my server, being FreeBSD and having no real money for a good solid backup solution for such an operating system did what any good admin would do. at least make regular tarballs, gzip them and ship them offsite. While this does suffice as a good backup strategy for the most part, it does not however save even myself from a failure spot. So Sunday, I was doing some cleanup and wiped out my backups from over a month ago. Keep in mind a month ago is when I installed NextGen Gallery for my wordpress blogsite software and decided to discontinue use of my previous Gallery for personal reasons. (security mainly) When I did so, I also changed my backup selections to include the new paths for the new gallery and left off the old gallery since I fully intended on porting over my gallery as quickly as possible. (can you smell the failure here?) so, Sunday I go about maintenance and cleared out all my old backups from over a month ago not even thinking for a second that later in the day I would need them.
I logged into my old gallery sometime in the afternoon and decided to clean out the albums I had already ported to get a better view of what I still needed to port. Instead of deleted selected galleries, I deleted the entire thing. Before I had realized what I had done, it was …. GONE. Now when I say GONE, I mean it. Anyone who knows UFS2 file systems (freebsd) knows that there is no recycle bin unless you make one for yourself and script it, blah blah… when you delete a file, the pointer is wiped and the open space becomes territory for destructive over-write. 😉
I’d say that 95% of my pictures I have a backup for already on my server at home, but it was those 5% that I didn’t have anymore (but do now) that sent me a feeling I never want again.
Did I panic? no. Did I lose control of my bodily functions? Almost. Did I find a new hero on the internet? YES.
Christophe Grenier at cgsecurity.org, you are my new hero. LOL
He’s got a handy little tool out there called photorec which I have to say is probably the biggest life saver should you ever shoot yourself in the foot. It scours the entire drive for whatever you wiped out from top to bottom and leaves no stone (or block) unturned. 6 hours of running on the /home partition (it’s pretty darn big) and it recovered every one of my lost photos. (as well as everyone elses… BAD BAD BAD ARTIFICIAL!!)
Moral of the story? Make sure you have a good recent backup before you click delete on ANYTHING and don’t be a complete tard. IT people will laugh at you as I laugh even at myself. 🙂
