Humility

For all that I'm a fairly easy-going guy, at heart I'm really an arrogant bastard. I'm smarter than average, and I tend to plan ahead better than most I've met, which translates into thinking I'm better than others, especially in my chosen field. Luckily, every so often I manage to do something bone-headed enough to ground myself in reality again... like this past weekend, for example.

I won't bore you all with the gory details... but suffice it to say that the server upgrades I intended to take most of Saturday afternoon ended up taking all that night, including deleting an archive of important files right after losing the originals and doing a from-scratch install on one machine... which got me to the point that I only had to deal with unhappy coworkers today instead of unhappy customers. Oh, and I get to look forward to more of the same tomorrow, at least.

You know what I need... one of those guys the Caesars of old had, to constantly whisper in my ear "remember, thou art mortal"... any takers?

Movie o' the day: 300

Finally went and saw 300 today with my weekly gaming group... and I'd say it's worthwhile. Sure, it's not exactly historically accurate (although it does come closer than I would expect out of Hollywood), and it doesn't have a real deep plot... but minute-for-minute, it's got more quotable (or mockable, if you prefer) lines and more violence (sometimes reaching Monty Python-esque proportions) than any film I've seen recently. Oscar material it ain't, but for a little primal-level distraction, it's hard to beat.

Behold, THE Microsoft Pen

For anybody that doesn't know me personally, I'm the Computer Guy for a smallish company... which got me an invite to the recent Vista Launch event. Since that gave me an opportunity to learn how Vista would make my life better/easier/shinier for years to come (and leave work for half a day), I went. One of the perks was a swag bag full of mostly useless things, but included was THE Microsoft Pen.

I refer to this pen as THE Microsoft Pen because, frankly, it is the perfect Microsoft pen, for reasons I'll detail below... but first, let me describe the basic construction of this pen. The click-button at the top of the pen does not bring out the pen point, but rather turns on a red LED that makes the clear plastic lower bit glow like a little lightsaber-dagger (light-dagger?). To get the pen point, you have to twist the point end of the pen. In order to support the glowy bits, ink storage is reduced to about half the total length of the pen... and, since I dared to unscrew the top cap to see what sort of battery it used, the glow-button is intermittent, needing careful positioning to perform its intended task.

So, why is this pen THE Microsoft Pen? The pretty bits are readily accessible, the useful bits are hidden, some of the useful bits have been pared down to make way for the pretty bits, and the pretty bits misbehave if you push it too far.

And so it begins...

Well, I never thought the day would come... but yes, the blogging has begun. I wouldn't expect to see much here, especially not routine updates, but you're certainly welcome to sniff about.