Okay, seriously… what the hell?

This has been one messed up day down in the ol’ work parking lot.

I got in at my usual time (that is, to say, 6:45 AM), and nothing seemed out of the ordinary. When Jesse (my IT coworker) got in at 8 AM, he told me there was a panhandler down in the parking lot who hit him up for money. He apparently also got the corporate controller and the CFO as well. I don’t know if anyone ever ended up telling him to leave, but still… this is a first for my building.

Then, it got weirder. Around lunchtime I went up to the datacenter, and there was nothing out of the ordinary when I left or came back. However, 5 PM came around, and I packed up and left. When I got down to the car, I noticed some… marks on the driver’s side window that had not been there when I got back from the datacenter.

Lipstick marks on the windshield...

I apologize for the crummy pic, as I used my camera phone and the lighting outside is terrible, but that is what it looks like: lipstick stains. Someone, for some reason, kissed my driver’s side window three times. I have no idea who, and I have no idea why. Considering the area of town my office is in, I almost don’t want to know. I suppose I could check the security camera footage, but A) I don’t know if my car was in camera range, and B) I’m not sure I want to know what it was.

Let’s just hope this isn’t an omen for how the rest of the week is going to be.

Another end-of-weekend post…

Well, it’s not been THAT interesting of a weekend, mind you, but it’s been an okay one. First off, though, I changed wallpapers on my desktop PC… heh. I liked how this one matched my current WindowBlinds theme. :-)

Main PC desktop - 21 Jan 2007

This does remind me… I need to complete Halo for PC. Heh.

I can’t say that I got too much accomplished yesterday. I did go out with the folks to the mall and took them out to eat at Macaroni Grill, but that was mainly because I had a $25 gift card to there. Otherwise, the most I did yesterday was re-enable comments on my Gallery, but only after putting in a captcha system to hopefully block out any more comment spam. *shrug* I didn’t even realize I was being hit there until I just happened to take a look at the database and noticed them. Bah. I also managed to switch off remote hotlinking to the images in the Gallery, after noticing someone was linking to one of the images in a forum post somewhere out there. I just wish I had found it sooner… heh.

As for last week, I suppose you could say one of the highlights was that on Thursday afternoon, Dave called me asking if I wanted to get dinner somewhere. So, I ended up meeting him over at Cheesecake Factory. So much for eating light; I had gone to Chili’s for lunch with the new coworker and the sysadmin. Still, I got something different from there: a barbecue chicken pizza. To make up for it, I ended up having a sandwich for lunch and soup for dinner on Friday.

As for this week, well… I need to stop at Fry’s at some point to pick up a couple of MiniDV tapes, and maybe pick up Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War – Dark Crusade. Then I’ve got other things going later this week, including a much-needed vacation. In any event, it should be a good week, and I’m looking forward to it. :-)

The Gallifrey Chainsaw Massacre?

http://www.gallifreyone.com/cgi-bin/viewnews.cgi?id=EEyAFVyZyEtXLNYxVc&tmpl=newsrss

According to tvshowsondvd.com, several Netflix customers noted that their rented copies of Doctor Who: The Complete Second Series disc one had a problem. Apparently at the 32 minute mark of New Earth the episode switches to a rather gruesome scene from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning. Along the same lines, the special features section of the disc does not work.

Once the BBC were contacted and made aware of the issue they quickly responded with a statement that yes, there was a problem with the discs in question. Only Netflix copies of disc one were affected and not those for purchase in stores. While the BBC works on replacing the faulty DVDs, Nexflix has pulled disc one as being available for rent until the situation is resolved.

I have to admit, I would never have seen THAT one coming. It makes me wonder whether someone over at the BBC is going to lose their job over this stunt. (I’m inclined to believe this is someone’s idea of a sick joke, but anything’s possible…)

So much for my preferred antivirus…

Bah. Today was my more-or-less annual cleaning day on my PC. I really should do it more often, but it’s always a pain to get everything disconnected from the back of my PC and remove it. Well, I removed it, and got the inside of the desk’s PC cubbyhole dusted out. I then took the PC into the next room, and vaccumed it out (with the help of some compressed air purchased from Office Depot). Like I said, I really should do it more often, especially as dust buildup had destroyed my old video card on the night of the Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks Fight Night. Anyway, once the system was cleaned up and good as new, I popped it back into the cubbyhole, hooked up the cables, and booted the system back up… and that’s where things fell apart.

Before today, I had been using ClamWin Antivirus for my PC. However, as much as I like ClamWin (which is a Windows port of the Clam Antivirus software I use for my mail server), the one thing it lacks is an on-access real-time monitor. So, I decided to throw Avast onto this machine, as I had had luck with it before. I had removed ClamWin and installed Avast before shutting down the PC. When the machine came up, it went through a full virus scan before boot… and crashed during logon. Crap.

A couple of aborted logons later, I FINALLY was able to log in using my little-used Administrator account and get the Avast software uninstalled. Once that was done, I was able to log in using my own account and survey the damage. Fortunately only Steam and Logitech SetPoint were corrupted and required a reinstallation. I’ve since installed AVG Free Edition and it’s working fine so far.

It’s kind of amusing, in a full-circle sort of way. I went to Avast from AVG in the first place because I was trying out Windows XP X64, and AVG didn’t support the 64-bit version of Windows (and Avast did). It’s annoying that Avast didn’t work out for me this time, but I don’t really mind going back to AVG. Now, once ClamWin reaches 1.0 and supports real-time monitoring, then I’ll probably go back to it and see how that works out. For the time being, though, I think I’ll stick with what I have.

Stolen from foxbaby, of all people…

Your results:
You are Magneto

Magneto
52%
Apocalypse
50%
Dr. Doom
50%
Juggernaut
45%
Lex Luthor
42%
Riddler
41%
Mr. Freeze
40%
The Joker
38%
Mystique
37%
Dark Phoenix
36%
Kingpin
35%
Venom
34%
Catwoman
29%
Poison Ivy
27%
Green Goblin
21%
Two-Face
13%
You fear the persecution of those that are different or underprivileged so much that you are willing to fight and hurt others for your cause.


Click here to take the Super Villain Personality Test

At the end of another weekend…

Bleh. I activated a two-day trial code for Xbox Live Gold this afternoon so I could play some Gears of War against people like Cone41, BloodySinner, and Total-MK. The end result was that I got my ass kicked so badly that after one set of matches, I shut my Xbox 360 down and set the home theater receiver to play music off my iPod. It ceases being fun when you’re almost always the first one killed and even when you try to take down someone it never works.

Otherwise, it’s been a rather uneventful weekend here. Friday night was spent at the Cheesecake Factory, as I met my boss there for dinner to discuss work-related matters. It was good to get a meal there, as it had been a long week at work for reasons I’d rather not get into here. Yesterday was mostly a slow day, other than driving up to Louie’s place to meet him and Dave for dinner. After watching the Colts beat the Chiefs, we drove over to Benihana’s for dinner. It was a good thing we had gotten reservations, as when we got there we still had to wait a bit for a table, and people arriving without reservations were being told that it would be a two hour wait for a table. After a very good meal, we went back to Louie’s place and watched the Cowboys fall to the Seahawks, followed by some World Series of Poker. Dave also gave me two belated Christmas presents: the movie Bubba Ho-Tep on DVD, and a book by Carl Hiaasen called Sick Puppy. Thanks, Dave!

As for today, not much was really done that was productive. That suits me fine, really, as after this past week I REALLY needed some downtime. Right now, as stated previously, I’m listening to my iPod on my home theater, and drinking some bottled water. The rest of this week, well… I don’t know what all will be going on. I will be putting an end to my lunches out, and will be eating my sandwich at my desk. Hopefully that will help me shed a few pounds… heh. Tomorrow evening will also be spent taking my old 19″ ViewSonic CRT monitor over to George’s house; he needs a new monitor and this CRT was doing nothing except for gathering dust in my storage facility.

Ah, well. We’ll see how this week goes, and then take it from there, I guess. :-)