Year: 2004

Matt’s mother got some terrific whale photos during the Antarctica trip. This was of course prior to her becoming a legend among polar travelers by puking into a humpback’s blow hole.

Nadia and Zac are moving off to Asia, so the whole gang went out last night to see them off. Zac’s story about an Australian guy wrestling an anaconda was epic, and all in all it was a great way to say goodbye to those two — San Francisco won’t be the same without Nadia and Zac in it. Friday night was spent at Universal CityWalk having drinks with the roommate and watching Kill Bill Volume 2. Word to the wise — when going to a screening at the CityWalk IMAX theatre on opening night, arrive early. From the second row Uma was looking mighty nice, but my neck is still killing me from the experience.

I can’t think of a good reason to post a link to Jason’s blog, nor can I come up with a reason to post a photo from last year’s meat massacre.

Following up from the last entry, Dell finally agreed that the computer needed to be repaired, and in fairness to them once that was settled they sent a courrier to pick it up (he even brought a box to ship it in) and then had it fixed and back to me in less than seventy-two hours.

In other news I spent the long weekend in the Bay Area, at one point somehow ending up at a party filled with tattoo-covered middle-aged bikers. There was Sam Wo’s late on Saturday night, vicious defense on the basketball court against Kev and Aaron (including a dive to the pavement that drew blood), and seven strikes in a row bowled by the Goob. In addition to his bowling feats the little bugger cold-called some girl he hadn’t seen in years, went to see her for an entire day, and has already wrangled two more dates out of the deal.

When all of the fun in the Bay Area was finished I slogged through the drive back to LA only to discover that my roommate had dead-bolted the door on the inside and then gone to sleep. Hopping over the patio walls and beating on her window wouldn’t wake her up, so I had a nice nap out on an air mattress until I finally was able to get in.

The network interface card on my laptop has been acting up lately, and today it conveniently died an hour before my new work PC was set up, stranding all of my data so that I couldn’t email them to people who needed them. I called Dell technical support; in the past this has been a relatively quick and painless process during which I get put on hold for thirty to sixty minutes, and then quickly explain to the tech support person exactly what the problem is and what I’ve done to remove all doubt that anything else could be wrong. They then arrange to have my PC sent to a Dell service center, and in a few days all is well.

When I called tonight I went through the normal forty-five minute hold time before someone picked up:

“Hello, what seems to be your problem.”

Shit, they outsourced their tech support to India. I explained the problem — I couldn’t connect to the network, when the card was connected the computer would crash, and I had already tried different network cables and re-installing the network drivers. And no, I hadn’t installed any new hardware or software lately.

“Could you please speak more clearly, it seems that the phone connection is not so good.”

This definitely won’t be quick. I explained again, more slowly and using very small words.

“OK, let’s first check the network cable. Is it plugged in to the wall?”

One more time I explained that I’d tried several network cables, and further repeated the other steps that I’d tried.

“And how did you reinstall the card?”

I bit through the side of my laptop and ripped it out with my teeth… I explained that I used the Windows troubleshooter, which is available from the device manager.

“That is not supported by Dell! That may be the cause of your problem!”

Microsoft’s primary tool for fixing computer problems isn’t supported. She is making things up now… Seeing as the problem had been occurring for a week, and that I’d only tried the troubleshooter today, I suggested that this might not be the smoking gun that my tech support friend seemed to think it was.

“Well, it is better if you do not do this. What I would like you to do now is to right click on My Computer, choose properties, and then choose device manager. From there right click on the network card and choose properties. You will see a button labeled troubleshooter…”

I’m going to fly to India and bludgeon her with my laptop. After another half hour of pain she came to the dramatic conclusion that since she had “eliminated the possibility that it is the network cable” that the network interface card was likely at fault; however, she indicated that until I had tried using the Dell Diagnostics CD (which was back at home) she couldn’t authorize having the laptop sent in to be fixed. I still love Dell, and will probably buy Dell machines until the end of time, but when I call back (having now run the diagnostic CD — the network interface test failed) God help any tech support person who even mentions network cable.

Life, during the past two weeks:

• 7:30 AM – Alarm goes off. Press the snooze button repeatedly.
• 8:45 AM – Arrive at Starbucks. See if the girl who looks like Tina Fey is working. She isn’t.
• 9:00 AM – Arrive at work. Attempt to figure out how the hell all of the Warner accounting systems can interoperate.
• 3:00 PM – Still no clue on how the systems work together.
• 7:00 PM – Give up, go home.
• 7:30 PM – Arrive at the gym. Wait for random chick to finish her workout of walking two miles.
• 9:00 PM – Go to grocery store, tell the woman gathering signatures for her petition that I’m not interested. Again.
• 11:30 PM – Go to bed.
• 2:00 AM – Ponder what the underlying causes of insomnia might be.

As you can probably tell, the excitement around here is electric. If I owe you e-mail right now please understand that I’ll write back as soon as I’ve got a story to tell that won’t induce brain atrophy.

I went back to San Francisco for the weekend — couldn’t take being in Los Angeles anymore. Jill (one of the roommates) finished moving out and is on her way back to Michigan, and her replacement is apparently a guy, so the Three’s Company life has come to an end. Beyond that there’s not much to report — the journal may not be particularly interesting again until I’m back in South Georgia 186 days from now.

I’m now living a Three’s Company existence with two female roommates in an amazing apartment complex that’s only four blocks from the office. We were up late last night drinking wine and debating whether or not Sex and the City was a wonder of female liberation or a show that taught that sluttiness and knock-off purses are all that a woman needs in life. I was outnumbered, but the next time Aaron visits then this can of worms is gonna get re-opened.

Day one back at work went over without major incident, although I did nearly nod off in a meeting at the end of the day — discussions of how the accounting department determines expenses wasn’t something I was able to get very excited about. Luckily the meeting ended before my head hit the table and shortly thereafter I got in a crappy run before starting to pour over my notes from the day. Not that I’m counting, but it’s 192 days until South Georgia.

From the department of positive thinking: one thing that’s swell about LA is that the landscape isn’t ruined by having lots of ugly buildings on the horizon since you can’t see more than a quarter mile because of the damn smog. And everyone looks beautiful as they drive around in their convertibles and SUVs at ninety miles an hour with their scripts and lattes in hand.

It seems like a lot longer than two months ago that Rod, Kaiyote, myself, and the rest of the gang were enjoying a barbecue in a whiteout while anchored off of the Antarctic Peninsula.

I’m heading back to Los Angeles either tomorrow or Thursday, so retirement number two is nearly at an end. The days of playing basketball and eating out with my brother and of waking up on an icebreaker to see whales are soon to be replaced with time in meetings and in front of the computer. Thankfully retirement number three starts in six months…

The latest updates:

• Amazing weather today, and Aaron and I spent our time on the beach in Pacifica and then ogling waitresses at Mudville Grill.
• The new server is here and chugging happily along, although I’m still struggling trying to get everything configured.
• Through the rather heroic efforts of one of the managers I’ll be returning to Warner Brothers on March 22, although this time it seems I’ll be on a slightly different project with some management responsibilities, so we’ll see how that goes.

Spent the weekend with friends in Tahoe — I ski poorly and gamble worse, although Aaron’s video poker follies far surpassed my own. There was some memorable foosball with enough trash-talking to rival a South American soccer match, some skiing in the backyard of the cabin, and the usual laughter and shenanigans that occur when Aaron, Scott and Zach are put in the same room.

In other news, all of the trip photos are finally online — twenty-seven days is just a wee bit longer than the week I expected it would take.

Thirty of the thirty-one rolls of film from the Antarctica & Patagonia trip are now online, and I’ll hopefully get the last one done by the weekend. Digital photography is looking vastly more appealing after sorting and scanning over a thousand slides.

The hard drive on my web server has moved on to the great trash heap in the sky, so I’ve had to make a quick transition of servers. The site should (hopefully) be plugging merrily along on my mother’s Windows box until a replacement machine arrives next week from Dell. In the mean time the message boards will be gone but all else should be the same — please let me know if things seem to be amiss.