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It’s Been a While

Well, it’s been a while since the last post. Not that anyone cares (or should care), but here’s why…I was sitting around about a month ago, and a friend of mine said he needed help his blog. He has a blog detailing through text and pictures, his trip around New Zealand. Given broadband that his access to decent free servers for picture hosting was spotty, I offered my help by giving him storage space on one of my websites to host his pictures from.

So, I was trying to make this work for him, when I realized that my hosting provider couldn’t accomodate me too well – no sub FTP accounts, no subdomains, etc. No cpanel or fantastico. I’d been there (Hostsave) for about 4 years, and had been content. Email was 99%, and general uptime was considered “the five nines”. I had been a little frustrated with the lack of services, and this I guess, was the kicker.

So, I decided to move two websites from Hostsave to Hostgator, and move all of my websites off of Network Solutions and put them on Go Daddy. So, I went from 2 registrars and 3 web hosts to 1 registrar (GoDaddy) and 1 webhost, Hostgator. 🙂

So, in making all these changes (especially trying to move from Hostsave that didn’t have cpanel/fantastico to Hostgator which did), it meant a lot of broken links. In addition, I decided to stop using www.blogger.com and get into something a little more indepth, like my Fantastico-provided WordPress which is what this blog is now run on.

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The Day Job Just Keeps on Getting Better

Tolerance:The capacity for or the practice of recognizing and respecting the beliefs or practices of others.

Like in most offices, my day job has a “suggestion box”, where employees can anonymously submit suggestions, which get read aloud monthly at our BPNR (financial) meetings.

On Tuesday, we had our most recent meeting. At the end of the meeting, our branch manager read the suggestions. The suggestions this time really fucking insightfull, real time-wasters. Without further adue, here is what they were:

1) Could people please make less noise when congregating together to leave at 5pm. Some employees have to work till 5:30 or 6:00pm and we find it disturbing.

My comment: Fine. Thanks for approaching the 2 or 3 people that might have been doing it one or two days. You had to be a coward and submit an anonymous comment. You are now known as no balls.

2) Cursing. There is too much foul language used at work.

My comment: Go fuck yourself.

3) Please refrain from eating Chinese food at your desk – it smells.

My comment: My head is still spinning, so I have no comment.

People, these were the suggestions that were in the box this month. The voices in my head haven’t stopped screaming since this meeting, so I don’t know what to make of it. What I do know is we have a bunch of fucking pussy babies at work.

So, what have I been doing. For one, I have been generally louder than usual. Secondly, I have dropped the f-bomb in casual conversation. And today, I ordered Chicken w/ brocolli.

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Finally, a Bright Idea

Do you ever come across something that you weren’t expecting, and you say to yourself “Jesus, finally a great idea” or “boy, I didn’t really expect that great idea coming”? This happened to me the other day.

I live on Long Island, and love it or not, the only way off of it on roads is to go West, toward NYC, at which point you have your choice of 3 basic ways to leave:

  • Through Manhattan
  • Through Brooklyn to Staten Island and into New Jersey
  • Through the Bronx, North to points North of NYC or New England

Since the very day these roads were built, most roads leading in and out of NY have tolls on them, these days usually in only one direction. With the advantages of computers, the 1990s found the “EZ-Pass” System established in NY, and as the years have gone on, it extends throughout the Northeast Corridor. Instead of actually stopping at the toll both at the Verrazano Bridge to pay the $9 toll leaving Brooklyn, you can go through the toll as long as you have the RFID (Radio Frequency ID) tag, called “EZ-Pass”. A sensor at the toll lane will “talk to” your car’s EZ-Pass tag, and bill your account for the $9. You don’t even have to stop, just slow down to the posted 5-15mph limit, and you’re on your way.

Beautiful.

Now, I went to the University of Delaware for college, from 1993 to 1999 (no wiseass, I lived there for a part of the time, didn’t take me 6 years to finish school thnakyouverymuch ;). During my time there, I made many round trips from Newark, DE to Long Island, NY. Thankfully, the NJ Turnpike Authority finally deciced (in 1996 or so) to utilize the EZ-Pass system on the TPKE. Great! So, here I go, traveling southbound toward Delware, only to wait a full hour (most of the time) at the exit 1 (furthest exit southbound on the TPKE entering Delaware) to use my EZ-Pass to pay the damn toll. Now, I bet you’ll ask why. 🙂

NJ did use the EZ-Pass system on the Turnpike, and implimented it without any major problems, but they didn’t do anything to the tollbooths to accomidate the amount of cars that still had to travel through them. The sheer volume of cars caused a slow-down, and EZ-Pass or not, you were still waiting to pay your toll. This caused me major headaches, a few latenesses to work and class, and probably drove me to drink a little more than I should have sometimes. 🙂

And here is the part of the story where it relates to the title of this post. 🙂 This past weekend, my girlfriend and I took a trip down to visit my old college stomping ground, the U of Delaware. We took the Long Island Extressway to the Belt Parkway, through Brooklyn, and over the Verrazano Bridge to Staten Island. From there, we took Route 440 to the Outerbridge Crossing, into I-287 into New Jersey, and then finally onto The New Jersey Turnpike south. A about an hour and twenty minutes later, I’m approaching exit 1 of the New Jersey Turnpike where I have to pay my toll, and I began to explain to my girlfriend about the long delays I used to encounter here and what a tremendous bitch at every level it was. I was so pleasantly suprised when I noticed a completely redesigned toll booth system, consisting of several “express EZ-Pass” lanes. Huge, wide lanes that would accept EZ-Pass and you could go through at the posted speed limit of 65mph. No more wait, no more hassle, and that put me in such a great mood. 🙂 Evolution is a wonderful thing, when done right. 🙂

While great, I think it’s a decade late. Testing was done with the EZ-Pass system, and the system correctly handled an EZ-Pass tag on a test car doing 130+mph.

Here’s some interesting facts about the tolls around NYC:

  • When it opened in 1964, the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge was the world’s longest suspension span. Today, its length is surpassed only by the Humber Bridge in England.Its monumental 693 foot high towers are 1 5/8 inches farther apart at their tops than at their bases because the 4,260 foot distance between them made it necessary to compensate for the earth’s curvature. Each tower weighs 27,000 tons and is held together with three million rivets and one million bolts. Seasonal contractions and expansions of the steel cables cause the double-decked roadway to be 12 feet lower in the summer than in the winter.

    Located at the mouth of upper New York Bay, the bridge not only connects Brooklyn with Staten Island but is also a major link in the interstate highway system, providing the shortest route between the middle Atlantic states and Long Island.

    In Brooklyn, the bridge connects to the Belt Parkway and the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway and to the largely residential community of Bay Ridge. On Staten Island, which saw rapid development after the bridge opened in 1964, it joins the Staten Island Expressway, providing access to the many communities in this most rural of the city’s five boroughs.

  • Current toll for Verrazano-Narrows bridge = $9.
  • Amount of cars per day that cross it = 150,000 (thats $1.35 million/day)
  • Total road tolls I paid on my round-trip: ~$26.

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Inconsiderate Coworkers


At my day job, we each have little cubicles…about the size of a “walk-in” closet, each person is sectioned off into their own little “office” without the privacy of an actual office.

It also happens to be that time of year again, when little children in school are asked to go door-to-door to sell useless shit to people, and then if they sell a lot, they get a clock radio as a “gift” or something like that. Really useless shit, ya know?

I hate that stuff. A big corporation should not be using children to sell their products, teasing them along the way with the chance of winning prizes.

Anyway, I happen to work with this socially inept 40 year old woman. As I’m walking back into my cubicle, she is already there. She throws down two large envelopes on my desk containing fund-raiser information/packets for each of her two children, and as she slams the packs down on my desk she says “it’s fund raiser time again”, and walks away.

Now, you have to realize that I am generally a nice person, but I don’t put up with any bullshit, rudeness, or people who have no social grace. I’m sorry, if you have learned anything living on this planet, you must learn how to properly speak to and interact with people. That’s all I ask…I don’t care if your old or young, smart or dumb. Have some class.

So, I see her smack these packets down on my desk, and before even sitting down in my chair, I grab the packets, and without looking, toss them over my shoulder and sit down at my desk, like I never saw them.

She proceeded to tell me what a dick I was, and I told her “I disagree, but I respect your opinion.” Then, I explained to her the proper way to approach someone in order to guarantee a better chance of that same someone buying something.

Anyone ever come into contact with people like this? If you do, have some fun with them. 😉

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Ferries; Saving Time and Aggravation

I just got back from a lovely 6-day trip to my summer house on Martha’s Vineyard. Being that I live on Long Island, the normal thing I like to do is to hop on the LIE (I-495 East) toward NYC, take the Cross Island Parkway North to the Throggs Neck Bridge, and follow that to I-95 North, which I take to Providence, then veering off to I-195 East toward Cape Cod. Anywho, on a good day, doing a healthy 70-80mph and no traffic, the total trip time from my neck of the woods to Woods Hole Massachusstes, which is where the mandatory ferry to MV is located, takes nearly 5.5 hours.

This most recent time – on August 10th – the trip took closer to 7.5 hours, as there was a 10 mile backup – I mean a DEAD STOP – on I-95 in Connecticut. I sat there, dumbfounded because there is no where else to go. I-95 is the only road. I saw two corpse-carriers roll by me, and 30 mins and a 1/2 mile later I got to the scene of the accident to which there was none. There was a car and two white vans on the shoulder, all damage-free. No bodies, no skidmarks, no carnage. Bummer.

Anyway, I’m sitting in traffic at about exit 75 on I-95 North, realizing that if I took the Orient Point, NY / New London, CT Ferry (aka the Cross Sound Ferry), I would have been “on-time”, as the accident occurred before the ferry port in Connecticut. Taking the ferry would have required more “preparation time”, but I wouldn’t have sat in traffic for 3 hours and the possibility of missing the MV ferry wouldn’t have been an issue.

I didn’t miss the MV ferry, but it was close. Driving to the Orient Point side to pick the ferry up, taking it, and arriving in New London Connecticut would have saved me tons of time and aggravation.

It is for this reason, that unless I leave in the middle of the night, I am now forever taking the Cross Sound Ferry to CT if I need to go to New England, and I highly suggest that you all should think about it to. 🙂

Cross Sound Ferry

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A Technical Support Insider’s Blog – A Company’s Potential Nightmare

Cablevision is the cable company that services Long Island, parts of Queens and Brooklyn, and parts of NJ with their brands which include “Optimum TV”, “Optimum Voice” (VoIP telephone service), and “Optimum Online”, which is their cable modem Internet service.

Technical Support, as most companies have it these days, is relatively poor. If you’re a caller with a problem, consider yourself lucky if you are actually speaking to someone in this country.

Anyway, if you have some technical skill, you can avoid calling customer service, and instead research the answer yourself. One site I like to look at for info is BroadbandReports.com. On this website, there are forums for many popular cable companies, unsupported by the companies themselves, but instead, other users post together and solve problems/discuss issues collectively.

In a recent post, an anonymous user posted his new blog, “Inside Technical Support” which details the inner-workings of the call-center for Cablevision.

By reading the blog, one can tell that this author is pretty pissed off. Discussion on Broadbandreports even questions if this author still works there. At any rate, Blogs themselves can be quite a tough pill to swallow for corporations, as this author and apparent current Cablevision employee, has no trouble badmouthing Cablevision management and even Cablevision customers.

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Grand Theft Auto: Stop the Insanity!!


I don’t know if you’ve heard already, but the powers that be — those that decide whether a video game is fit for a certain age group — recently deemed Grand Theft Auto San Andreas too risque for the public’s eyes due to the potential (on the PC version only, not Playstation or Xbox) to see a simulated sex scene between the game’s lead character and a female character.

They have changed the games rating from an “M” (Mature) to an “AO” (Adult’s Only). This is the equivalent of changing a movie’s rating from R to NC-17, nearly guaranteing financial failure. Why? Because now, no retailer will stock the game with an “AO” rating.

They said that the sex scene is what gave it the AO. This sex scene isn’t even viewable in the console version of the game, you have to have the PC version.

What they apparently didn’t find objectionable is the massive killing in the game, which is essentially the goal. I love the game, and I’ve owned all the GTA games in the series. However, no one seems to have a problem with killing; via knife, hand, kick, pistol, shotgun, machine gun, or AK-47. You can take someone’s head off in the game and walk all over their limp corpse, getting their blood on your shoes and then walk away, leaving blood-prints on the ground. Nope, that’s not objectionable they’ve said, it’s the sex.

What the hell is going on? Time and time again something in this country is being “banned” or otherwise incorrectly labeled for sex, but violence is given a free pass.

And now, I have to get it on Ebay for an inflated price (nearly double what I paid for it 6 weeks ago) due to the controvercy. You know what they say — any publicity is good publicity.

It’s time to start banning the people that kindly decide what we should and should not see.

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Call me Pendergast


This is just an FYI to all: Continuing with the theme from 7/24/05 (see previous post), from here on out, I’d like to be called Gerald Pendergast.

Thanks
G. Pendergast

(Note: my new likeness is there to the right, courtesy Google images.)

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Saying stuff that makes no sense

We’ve all done it. You know when you say something stupid to someone, and by the time you know you’ve said it, it’s too late. You know what I mean, like asking someone if they’re pregnant and they respond “what?”. Thast sort of thing. You know you’ve done it, think hard.

I did it the other night. Nothing big, but I’m mentioning it because it’s not the first time I’ve done it. Generally speaking, as humans, we learn. I normally learn things from my environment, but apparently, I seem to have this happen again and again and again…:

The scene: Restaurant
The time: dinner

My party is seated, and the hostess says “enjoy your dinner”, and I say “thanks, you too.”

Hello? Head check. She ain’t eatin. I am. Why in God’s green Earth did I just say that? I do try and be polite, but thats a seperate issue. I basically told her to enjoy something that I was about to enjoy to which she was not a part of.

Weird.

Anywho, we’ve all done it, you can pick your own circumstance, but you know it’s there. 🙂

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Messing with Paradise; Martha’s Vineyard & Security


Well, I just got back from 6 days at my summer house on Martha’s Vineyard. In case you don’t know where that is, it’s an island – about 120 square miles in size – 12 miles off the coast of Massachusetts. I’ve been going there for about 25 years, 15 of which have been spent at my family’s summer house, which was built in 1985.

The best thing about Martha’s Vineyard (MV) is the relaxation and stress free life. It’s like a paradise; no crime and no worries. The largest thing you’ll have to “worry” about is finding a parking spot, or making your ferry to and from the island.

The last time I was there, it was September of 2003, two years after the 9/11 attacks in NYC and D.C. Even then, there wasn’t any real security at Woods Hole, which is where the auto ferry’s depart for MV.

Recently, on 7/7/05, there were attacks in London which prompted this country’s threat level to go from elevated to high. What this means in the grand scheme of things no one knows, but on a smaller scale, I found that it made traveling to MV from Woods Hole a lot more intrusive and a little more annoying.

I get to the terminal, which is basically a building with 3 docks and a parking lot. The area to board the boat is small. If the whole area is as big as a football field I’d be surprised. For the first time ever, in 20+ years of going to MV, my car was searched. I was asked to lower my windows and open my trunk, so the teenage and twenty-something summer work crowd (experts?) could sift through my luggage looking for God knows what. I hope they would find my dirty underwear, but that was no in the cards that day.

That was a quick check, and a little sticker was put on my car, which signaled to the rest of the workers that my suspicious vehicle – a 2004 Nissan Maxima – was checked, and declared bomb free. I didn’t have any chemical, biological or nuclear weapons. I did however lay a mean fart while waiting for my ferry, so that could have classified as a chemical weapon, I don’t know. Have to consult the Patriot Act for that one. Anywho, we board the ferry without trouble.

My girlfriend and I grab our seats, and it’s a beautiful day for a ferry. As the boat leaves, we are now flanked and escorted out of the harbor by two U.S. Coast Guard cutters, two machine guns on each and about 5 crew members on each boat.

There was almost an incident. A small boat – like a Boston Whaler, which seats about 4 people, came within about 50 yards from our boat as we left the dock. I could see a cooler, and a small family aboard. Very dangerous. 🙂 One of the Coast Guard ships got on their loudspeaker, and directed the boat to steer away from our ferry, as another crew member manned the machine gun turret. They literally watched that small boat for about 5 minutes, before they deemed it not a threat.

As soon as we left the harbor, Coast Guard turned around and we continued on the rest of the ~12 mile journey. To me, it makes more sense to not have that guard there, or have them escort the ship the whole way. I don’t quite see the point in escorting us just out of the harbor. If someone wants to do something, they’ll stay in open waters where there are less witnesses. Right?

So, we arrive at MV, spend 6 wonderful days there, and before I board the boat to go home, my car is once again searched. I’m questioning the logic in this, and I laugh when the ferry officer asks me to pop my hood. Yeah, my engine. She looked in my engine for about 5 seconds. If you own a 2004 Maxima or no someone that does, open the engine. Tell me where you can hide anything in there. Yeah, let me put something explosive or flammable next to something that gets hotter than hell.

Paradise lost? Absolutely not. Paradise annoyed? A little.