All right, someone explain this to me…

D'Arque Bishop

I admit to confusion.

I am not a Democrat. I am not a Republican. I consider myself Independent; something of a fiscal conservative with socially liberal beliefs. That said, I can’t remember the last time I voted Democrat. If I had to guess, it would be when I voted to re-elect Bill Clinton to the White House. In the past two Presidential elections, I voted for Bush the first time (which I fully admit was a mistake), and for Badnarik the second time. Otherwise, in local races, I usually vote Republican. (I would give quite a bit for a “none of the above” option, though…)

That said, why the hell is Barack Obama’s campaign sending me flyers and having people call me? I was bemused when I received a flyer for Obama’s campaign when Mom and Dad didn’t. (Then again, my parents are registered Republicans.) This morning, though, I got a call from Obama’s campaign. I pretended I wasn’t in mainly because I didn’t feel like talking to them, but still… what the hell?

*sigh* I’ll likely vote in the primary on Tuesday. When I do, though, I’ll likely end up voting for Ron Paul. Not because I think he’ll win, but because he the best choice of the group (and frankly, we can probably depend on Congress to keep him from implementing some of the ideas even I think are a bit extreme). Still, I’ll go in there wishing there really was a “none of the above” option. Dad put it best, though…

“Go in there, and vote Republican on the primary. Then you’ll have BOTH sides trying to contact you!”

UPDATE: Actually, I just talked to Mom and she explained what’s going on, as according to something she heard on NPR. Apparently Obama campaigners are getting onto governmental sites and getting the names of ALL registered voters, and contacting them via phone calls and flyers. I was wrong; Mom and Dad HAVE been getting campaign calls/flyers from Obama. I have to admit, it’s a brilliantly sneaky tactic…

Fraking Microsoft non-standards!

D'Arque Bishop

I hate how Microsoft can’t even be bothered to be consistent with how they treat their own program behaviors between different programs.

As some people know, I handle mail services for my parents and my father’s business. Of course, this means that whenever Mom or Dad have a problem regarding email, they come straight to me for help. (Of course, they do this for every computer issue, but never mind…) The other day, Dad came into my room with a puzzled expression, and asked if our email server strips out attachments. I looked at him, equally puzzled, and asked why. It turned out a customer of his had sent him an email message that was supposed to have an attachment, but there was none there. I told him that the mail server doesn’t strip out attachments; if the virus filter finds a message with malware on it, it quarantines the entire message and notifies me. Dad then said his customer had checked with someone and that said someone had claimed it was a problem with the virus/spam filter on the remote side. I offered to investigate for him, if only to confirm that just maybe his customer forgot to send the attachment (which I considered most likely).

The first thing I did was check the mail server logs, just to make sure. Sure enough, according to the logs, the message was large enough to have contained an attachment. So, I went over to Dad’s laptop and had him load up Outlook Express (don’t ask). The message showed no attachment. He also loaded Windows Live Mail, and the attachment wasn’t there either. I then had him forward the message to me as an attachment so I could see it in Thunderbird. I got the email, looked at it, and this time the attachment showed up.

It was a bloody winmail.dat file.

For those not familiar with it, Microsoft Outlook and Exchange Server do something a bit dodgy when it comes to email attachments in certain circumstances. Most email clients standardize on the most-commonly used MIME for encoding email attachments, or the ancient but possibly-still-used Uuencoding. However, Microsoft Outlook and Exchange, when set to use Rich Text formatting and Microsoft Word when composing emails, sends the email formatting and attachments in a TNEF-encoded file called winmail.dat. This problem, on the other hand, doesn’t occur if MS Word isn’t used as the editor, or if plain text or HTML is used as the formatting method. Fortunately, winmail.dat readers/decoders are plentiful.

The WTF of this situation was how Outlook Express and Live Mail, both Microsoft products, dealt with the attachment. Instead of showing the attachment as a generic winmail.dat file like Thunderbird, or decode and show the data in the file like Outlook, Outlook Express and Live Mail just hide the attachment and pretend like it’s not there. Can’t Microsoft even be internally consistent with how they treat their own standards, such as they are? I wonder how many times something similar has happened, except that the recipient didn’t have an admin with the time or clue to figure out what was going on. Especially when one considers that my father is hardly the only business person out there that uses Outlook Express or Live Mail for his email…

Ah, well. I’ve done all I can at this point, which pretty much consisted of telling Dad to tell his customer not to use MS Word for sending emails to my father. Still, one can only imagine how many people out there are seeing this happen and blaming the recipient’s system, when it’s really Microsoft’s non-standards to blame.

Why is it the stuff that’s good for you makes you so miserable?

D'Arque Bishop1 Comment

After this past weekend, I resolved to improve myself. I started this past Monday. It’s Wednesday, and I’m already feeling sorry for myself.

This is a wonderful sign, methinks.

Last week, I went to Oklahoma City to get our new location onto our company network. While there, I once again met up with Jeff and Malinda; on the Friday night, we picked up barbecue and went back to their house to play some Talisman. While at their house, Jeff fired up the VCR, and to my surprise, it was playing a recording Jeff once had done of a session we did of one of his LARP campaigns. The tape mostly showed Jeff, Malinda (who was shocked by the amount of makeup she had on), and our friend Mikey (who tended to make these sessions hysterically funny with his one-liners). I wasn’t in the tape for more than 60 seconds (as my character was off elsewhere doing something else… long story), but when I did appear I felt a bit shocked and humiliated.

I was relatively slim back then. I was a bit overweight, yes, but nothing like I was now. I saw a reflection of myself… and I felt terrible about it. So, I gave up and resolved to do something about it.

First thing Monday morning, I weighed myself. I was rather mortified to learn that I weighed 258 pounds. From there, I started on a regiment. My goal is to lose either 60 pounds or six inches off my waist by the end of the year, and try to keep at around that size from then on.

Monday through Friday, when I wake up in the morning, I spend ten minutes or so working out with a couple of handheld weights. On Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, in the evening, I break out the Playstation 2, dance pad, and my copy of DDR Max 2, and spend about thirty minutes in workout mode. I can handle all of that with no problem.

My problem is that I love food, and I’m having to seriously change my eating habits. Normally when I go to lunch or dinner, I’d get something like a burger, or pasta, or pizza. Now I’m finding myself eating small sandwiches (like 6″ Subway subs), salads with minimal dressing, or just stuff like baked chicken with cabbage and green beans (my lunch today). Beer is right out, as are margaritas. I’ve also cut out most soda, limiting myself to one Diet Coke a day. As a result, I find myself just staring at my food for about half a minute, pining for a juicy burger or maybe a decent plate of pasta. I then dig in, knowing intellectually that this will make my body healthier, but still wishing I could have that damn burger.

About the only saving grace that I see coming is the fact that I’m allotting myself one splurge meal a week. I’ll have that burger, and maybe even a dessert. (No fries, though.) I know for a fact that if I stay on this regiment without ANY break, I’ll end up breaking it simply because I can’t take it anymore. My scheduled splurge night is Saturday; it’s Wednesday night, but Saturday still seems like a ways off. Here’s hoping time flies.

Ah, well… enough griping and moaning from me. I’m just hoping I do make my goal, and end up healthier for it. Ten months seems like a lot of time, but in a way, it’s like no time at all these days. I just hope it’s all worth it.

A penny saved is a penny earned.

D'Arque Bishop2 Comments

I admit, I allow myself a few personal quirks here and there to offset my relatively minimalist and “dark” preferences in terms of decor and the like. Then again, like everything else, I prefer such things to be functional more than anything else (with the occasional exception). This weekend, I took the time to deal with one of these quirks… namely, my piggy bank.

Yes, I have a piggy bank.

Back when I was working at Toys R Us, I was getting to the point where I was wanting somewhere to store my spare change, and I figured I might as well get a piggy bank. The problem was that when I looked at all of the piggy banks in the front of the store in the seasonal area (where they were typically kept), they were all flimsy, cheap plastic and ugly to boot. Then, one day, I happened to be doing some work in one of the preschooler areas when I noticed Little Tikes made a piggy bank. This one was cute, and VERY sturdy to boot. I went ahead and picked one up… and have been using it to this day.

What I do is every day when I come home from work, when I empty my pockets, I take the silver change from my pocket and dump it into Piggy. Then, every few years or so, Piggy gets so full that I end up emptying him and rolling up all of the change and using it towards a splurge purchase. Anything that doesn’t go into rolls goes back into Piggy for the next time.

So, what will I be using with the money I’ve gotten from Piggy? Well, this time… it’ll be an iPod Classic. My current iPod is okay, except for the fact that it won’t hold a charge. (Apple has said that whatever the issue is, it’s not the battery.) Also, I want an iPod that will play video for when I go on flights and the like. I might not have enough for the 160 GB model, but it’ll go a long way towards it. Ah, well… we’ll see what happens when I actually count it.

Though I do admit, I’m looking forward to taking the rolls in and depositing them, if only to see the looks on the bank tellers’ faces. :-)

A night on the town…

D'Arque Bishop

Right now, I’m at a Landry’s off of Westheimer waiting on dinner. Well, more like we’re waiting to be seated. We had originally intended on eating at Bennihana, but when we met at Louie’s, Dave told us we would have to change plans. Apparently the location we normally go to is closed for remodelling. Ah, well…

When we get done here, we’ll go shoot some pool. But for now, our table is ready earlier than expected. Fun fun…

Trying out a slightly different kind of laptop at work…

D'Arque Bishop

Well, as most people know, I work in IT for a medium-sized corporation. As a result of it, I get to play with some new and different technologies every so often. Well, a few months ago, I happened to come across something new while browsing the website of one of our standard equipment manufacturers. We use thin clients by Wyse extensively, as most work in our company is done on terminal servers. A couple of weeks ago, the decision was made to purchase one of these items, and it arrived a week or so ago.

The Wyse X90 laptop

(My apologies for using a stock photo. I meant to take a picture of ours using a camera but never got around to it.)

It’s a Wyse X90 laptop. In essence, it’s a thin client laptop. It lacks a hard drive and is fanless. On the other hand, the screen is sharp and clear, and comes with full 802.11g wireless networking support, plus an ethernet port, three USB ports, and an external VGA port. It’s also very light to carry.

But the question is, how well does it operate? To my surprise, it worked very well. It runs Windows XP Embedded, and boots into a limited user account by default. (Of course, I was able to log in as an Administrator.) I was able to put in our company’s standard connection configuration, plus with a bit of tweaking was able to install the Cisco VPN Client. It also comes with Internet Explorer, which is handy when you’re at a hotel or airport where you have to go through a portal page before being granted access to the internet.

Of course, you might be wondering how safe the machine might be from compromise when it’s running a form of XP. The answer is, “Very safe.” One of my favorite features of this laptop is the file write filter; once the machine is rebooted, all filesystem changes are reverted back and the system restored as it was at boot (or when the filter was enabled). That in and of itself makes me feel very comfortable with the machine.

Would I ever use this machine as my primary work machine? Of course not. Then again, I use several “local” tools in the course of my workday, which really wouldn’t work on the terminal servers. However, for our “average” users, one of these would make sense, especially if they just need a laptop so they can work on a business trip or when their usual laptop is being serviced or replaced. The only real annoyance we’re going through right now is the fact that I can’t get AT&T Communication Manager to load on the machine, so we can’t use our 3G cards with them… yet. However, there’s an upcoming model that has support for 3G cards. Hope isn’t lost yet. :-)

Ah, well… we’ll see how the laptop works out in the long run. For now, we’re awfully impressed with it and giving it a shot for our users.

Damn, I have awesome friends.

D'Arque Bishop2 Comments

So, I’m home from Oklahoma City. We had just purchased a new facility out there, and my mission was to evaluate the building and see what would need to be done to get it onto our network. It was a routine trip reason, but I can’t say I enjoyed how it started. Thunderstorms caused our plane to leave an hour late, and when we got into Oklahoma City, it had already started snowing. Fortunately the roads were mostly clear, so I got to the facility with no problems. I got done what I needed to get done, and was able to leave before Oklahoma City’s equivalent of rush hour started.

I had plans to meet up with my old friends Jeff and Malinda (who live in Norman), so once I got to the hotel I called Malinda and we made arrangements. At 6:15 or so, I made my way down to the lobby and waited for them to arrive. Malinda eventually walked in… and damn. She had not changed a bit. (Keep in mind it had been eight years since I’d seen her or Jeff.) Jeff looked like he’d gained a little weight, but that’s not a bad thing considering he was really thin before. We all got in the car… and they decided to surprise me.

I’ve posted before how I loved the board game Talisman and had even recently wandered into a Games Workshop store looking for a copy. Well, I had forgotten that I had introduced Jeff and Malinda to it way back when, when it was out of print. So, imagine my shock when they handed me a bag that contained this:

The Talisman game Jeff and Malinda got me…

Damn. I can probably get George to play, or maybe even Sean and his group. I don’t think Louie or Dave will ever be willing to give it a try, though. Hell, I can’t wait to introduce it to Misty… :-)

As you might imagine, I am very thankful and grateful. Thanks, guys! Now I just have to return the backpack I borrowed to take it home in, considering I had only brought a laptop backpack with me as an overnight bag.

Anyway, from the hotel we went to this GREAT Italian restaurant just off the campus of OU called Victoria’s. After a very satisfying meal there, we went to their house, where we continued to catch up, and took time to watch a hilarious Doctor Who parody called The Curse of Fatal Death. After a while, though, it was time to go home, as I had a flight back to the States in the morning and they had work. We did agree to meet up again when I go back up. :-)

Today was uneventful, though. I got to the airport with plenty of time to spare, which was used to get onto the company network and do some work. Once back in Houston, I met Dad for lunch at Denny’s, and from there went home and worked from there.

So, what’s going from here? Tomorrow evening I’ll be going to Sean’s birthday dinner and whatever they have planned afterwards. Next week looks like a standard week of work. The week after, though, looks more and more like I’ll be in Oklahoma City for a few days. I had thought that it would be a month before I returned for the network implementation, but instead the boss wants it sooner. I’ll have to email Jeff and Malinda to warn them ahead of time.

Either way, I don’t mind. I’m sure there’ll be plenty of time to catch up… and play Talisman. :-)

Is it Friday yet?

D'Arque Bishop1 Comment

Bleh. It’s been a hectic past couple of weeks.

I guess I should be happy that today wasn’t too bad of a day. I got quite a bit accomplished, including doing some testing on a new laptop we got in for possible deployment to the users (the Wyse X90, which I’ll probably go on about in another post). As it stands, though, my day’s been busier due to the fact that our level one tech support person was let go last week. We’ll get another one eventually, but for now I’ve got my hands full keeping up with my old workload and the added workload that would normally be handled by someone else. Ah, well.

At least this past Saturday was fun. I ended up making my way over to Dave’s house around lunchtime, and from there we made our way over to a Pei Wei less than a mile or two away for lunch. Once done there, we made our way to Katy Mills Mall; Dave wanted to buy a few records from Past & Presents. That was fine by me, as I had never been to Katy Mills. After he did his shopping (and I took a tech support call from Dad), we wandered around the mall for a bit. I admit I went into the Games Workshop store, to see if they had Talisman in stock. Turned out they didn’t… ah, well. After we left Katy Mills, we headed back to Dave’s apartment, where we watched Batman Begins (which Dave had never seen before). Louie arrived shortly after the movie ended, and he also got to meet Dave’s new cat, “Nature Boy”. (Louie had the same reaction to Nature Boy that I did: “WOOOOOO!” :-) ) We all ended up going to Outback for dinner, after which we got some coffee at Starbucks. Now, the plan was to go to a bowling alley and do the “Extreme Bowling” deal from 11-2 AM. Unfortunately, by the time we got there the waiting list was ridiculously long, so we headed back to Dave’s apartment and watched soccer. Before I left, though, Dave got me my belated second Christmas gift, which had been on backorder. He originally got me The Last House on the Left; this one was Daleks Invasion Earth 2150 AD. Thanks, Dave!

Sunday was uneventful for the most part, other than putting the servers here back on their battery backup after a glitch last week caused the UPS to go slightly off-kilter. I also got another CD off iTunes: Huey Lewis & the News’s greatest hits. :-) With this CD and the self-titled Information Society I got recently, I seem to be on an 80s kick. Otherwise, yesterday was a quiet day of relaxation.

So, what does this week bring for me? Well, later this week I’m going up to Oklahoma City overnight. I’ve already started making arrangements to meet my friends Jeff and Malinda (who I haven’t seen since shortly after their wedding) for dinner while up there, which should be fun. Also, on Saturday, Sean’s rescheduled birthday dinner is happening, which should be entertaining. Otherwise… well, we’ll just see what happens. :-)

Stolen from Ree…

D'Arque Bishop4 Comments
What Scott Means

You are the total package – suave, sexy, smart, and strong.
You have the whole world under your spell, and you can influence almost everyone you know.
You don’t always resist your urges to crush the weak. Just remember, they don’t have as much going for them as you do.

You are very open. You communicate well, and you connect with other people easily.
You are a naturally creative person. Ideas just flow from your mind.
A true chameleon, you are many things at different points in your life. You are very adaptable.

You are well rounded, with a complete perspective on life.
You are solid and dependable. You are loyal, and people can count on you.
At times, you can be a bit too serious. You tend to put too much pressure on yourself.

You are a seeker. You often find yourself restless – and you have a lot of questions about life.
You tend to travel often, to fairly random locations. You’re most comfortable when you’re far away from home.
You are quite passionate and easily tempted. Your impulses sometimes get you into trouble.