Scoolio the Defunct Helpdesker with 1 Blog to Rule them All

I'm bringing Blogger back

2011-10-24T01:30:00.000-05:00

Blogger Faithful?

Ok it's been a real long time since I've posted a new rant. What has the Estes been up to in the last few years.

Things have changed.

Facebook kind of became the king of the "What are you doing, thinking meme" for the modern digerati. Smartphones got cool and exploded in everyone's pockets like pop rocks. With smartphones and FB people kind of forgot about personel blogging for no monetary gain. I mean lots of cool and hip people still blog but it's mostly drivel you don't want to read, or BS self promotion stuff that nobody cares about.

I blogged in the beginning because it was the cool thing to do and I had a lot of to get off my chest.

Don't get me wrong it's still cool, and I still have stuff I want to get off my chest but I mostly just pull out my soap box at work and let it all hang out to vent.

I just lost an hour of life looking back my all my GMAIL history starting from day one of my early beta invite and it's like walking back through the last seven years of my life. I blogged so regularly about my day I actually go to warp back in time and re-read what I was thinking during all of those blog posts.

The sad part is that most of those blog posts have disappeared from my blog because my X deleted them from my account during what I now call the "Dark Ages" of our relationship/breakup. For my friends I apologize for being and feeling so moribund. I must have been "awful" to have been around back then. OMG I was so hung up on getting left for another guy. I did laugh out loud at some of the shit I said though.

Here was a good one I stumbled upon a couple of weeks after my allergy test and discovery of some late in life adult allergy onset stuff...

I'll adjust but now I have come to loathe eating. It used to be enjoyable and now it's a chore I have to perform to survive and greet the next day, kind of like wiping my asshole with soap. It's not pleasant but you have to do it every day.

I guess that's classic Jeff huh? Not too bad just short and with an analogy.

Here is a longer rant that I loved in the same vein...

I eat the shitiest food now. Tonight it was peas and rice. This last weekend it was Salad with no dressing. Now I know hundreds of people have it worse off. Kid's starve in Ethiopia, Adults with crones disease can barely swallow air, that dude on CSI died of a bee sting, blah, blah, blah, blah, fuck-em. It's my blog and I'm bitching. I don't give damn how the price of a cup of coffee could save little shamu-stick-can't pronounce his name's family from starving. If they don't start blogging and keeping flies out of their damn eyes then I just don't care. Let Brad Pitt do something about it. He can afford ten percent of his income. I just wish my bank balance would climb above ten bucks.

Now if you're thinking I'm an insensitive fuck-stick then your half right. I'm an Asian, Insensitive fuck-stick that hates stupid people that talk or call for tech support. Yea i said it if you're stupid and don't talk to other people or call my helpdesk then your A-ok in my book. If your dumb, or even worse stupid then please do everyone a favor and castrate yourself and go buy a Macintosh computer. They love stupid people since their OS is sooo easy to use even a fucktard like yourself you can use it. If your going to use Microsoft's shit then you've got to do the simple stuff.

That's the pissed off ranting Jeff that I miss.

At some point in my life I'll probably go back and re-post/edit the "deleted" blogs by recovering the copy I received in my gmail inbox, but I'd have to be pretty bored.

I can say that I'm happier now. More centered and focused.

Of course some themes from back then still crop up like money issues, and car issues but that is life.

I don't know if anyone even reads this blog anymore and the narcissist in me wants to think people still do but who read's dead blog posts? Maybe I'll blog more frequently as the moment strikes me or maybe this will be my twice annual blog post. I really don't know. I just know that I was very, very angry and slightly offensive before and I'm not apologizing for it I'm just recognizing it.

I do miss blogging though. It was very therapeutic for me. (mea culpa).

So what else has changed in my life since then.

My kids are older.
My car has changed twice.
I've gotten wiser.
I make more money but shit costs more so that's a wash.
I've visited Hawaii (Love you DOG)
I have a girlfriend again. (Did the math and it's been almost 7 years).
My side business is doing much better.
People don't buy me lunch as often as they should.

So life is better right?

I feel better but is it just as bad with different low points and high points? Is it my perspective that is better?

I really have no clue.

It's late and I've blogged. I feel more responsible now.

Posted by Jeff Estes wishing you would subscribe to my blog and sponsor my lunch breaks.

Word of the Day

2011-04-14T13:58:00.000-05:00

Came up in a morning meeting. We need a new word and I'm doing a fake word of the day now. Today's word Requently = Combined recently with frequently to indicate that this shit happens all the time (Frequently) and matter of fact this shit just happened yesterday so it requently happens.

Posted by Jeff Estes wishing you would subscribe to my blog and sponsor my lunch breaks.

Not Angry I swear

2009-02-16T22:28:00.000-06:00

Ok Sweet Papa JRoll.

This one is dedicated to you.

Hit this link

For those link retarded:
http://www.cybergooch.com/tutorials/pages/systembuild_4.htm

For those of you that have hand built a computer from parts (I salute you)

For those that have not. Please read the link above.

I have a painful story which I will not regale you with but let me just say that you should measure once and cut twice. Or read it twice before you do it. If youre not sure RTFM. (I'm not mad).

If you are ever installing a motherboard please remember your standoffs. This will literally burn you and set your board on fire if you are not careful.

That's it.

Posted by Jeff Estes wishing you would subscribe to my blog and sponsor my lunch breaks.

I'm so fucking there (Click the Link)

2008-11-20T23:40:00.004-06:00

If I wasn't so fucking tired and pissed this would be best blog post ever.

First thing. I get home today and my power is still off. Sofa King WeTarded.

I had to call maintainence to Flip my oustide breaker. I would have done this myself but the breaker box was padlocked. Seriously? Fucking padlocked. My trashcan is now full of former Fridge Food.

But on the serious tip hit this link and tell me you don't want to watch the movie with me.

http://www.startrekmovie.com/

OMFG I'm suck a Star Trek Nerd.

Now I'm going to rewind my day.

For those that aren't familiar with Cafeteria Plans at work let me break it down.

1) You commit to take X amount of money out of every paycheck to set aside into two seperate buckers.
2) Bucket 1 is for Child care related expenses
3) Bucket 2 is for Medical related expenses
4) You have a credit card to pay those expenses (assuming the vendor takes credit cards)
5) For everything else you need to "expense" the expenditures to get reimbursed from your funds.

Why would you do this?

First it's almost like a savings plan to pre-fund anticipated expenses.

Second the money is taken out of your Gross Pay (pre-tax). This means you can save some tax money! Woot.

Now hold your fucking horses. Here is the shitty part.

It's your money but you're not earning interest on this money those MGIS assholes are.
On top of that they can reject your claims and keep your fucking money.

Just recently I had a claim rejected because the invoice I submitted included one partial week of daycare from the last week of December 2007 that was showing up on my January 2008 invoice. I submitted over 900 dollars of legitimate expenses that was stone cold rejected becuase I include 48 fucking dollars from last year.

First off i need to disclose that if you don't claim money that you set aside they get to eat it and you eat shit and die and lose YOUR Fucking money.

I lost money last year since I over SAVED.

Second they are now rejecting my claim beacause I didn't claim that 48 bucks last year I accidently put that money into this years invoice so I get rejected for my own fucking money. (I'm super pissed if you missed that).

Third (thirdly?) Now they will not give me back the invoice I submitted so I could easily re-work it and redact that small amount off. Now I have to go through the trouble or re-requesting it from my daycare minus the 2007 stuff.

It took me nearly four weeks that get that invoice since it takes an act of congress to get any history older than 60 days from their antiquated computer invoicing tracking system.

If I end up not getting this money I'm going to go Postal and come unglued.

I so desperately need a vaction or I'm going to flay someone alive at work.

Woe be to the motherfucker that denies my next claim. I think I'll buy a Greyhound ticket, a chainsaw, and some tape recorder so I can drive out to this MGIS office and cut off body parts while I record their misery and say "mother fucker your claim for mercy has been DENIED"!!!!!

I'm so uber pissed I'm going to skip the umlaut on uber.

Fuck you, Fuck you, your cool, Fuck you.

Posted by Jeff Estes wishing you would subscribe to my blog and sponsor my lunch breaks.

I

2008-11-20T23:40:00.001-06:00

Posted by Jeff Estes wishing you would subscribe to my blog and sponsor my lunch breaks.

I'm still standing

2008-11-12T20:39:00.000-06:00

For those that still check this blog "I salute you".

Updates

Part of me wants to apologize for my infrequent blogging but the other part of me says hey it's my Blog. I blog when I feel like it.

Life is life for me and the more things change the more they stay the same. Work is busy as dogshit. I've still not updated my resume like a good little flight risk should. I've still got a pending offer on the table for a job in SoCal. My kids are still helions but they are my helions. My cat still has fleas Damnit. My house is still a wreck (No suprize for those that know me).

Facebook is coming out hard on me. I've got people crawling out of the woodwork that I haven't seen in 1.5 decades.

I also got three phone calls from people I haven't talked to in ages in the span of about give minutes.
Wish List

I still wish for more time, more sleep, less noise, and mechanic that does free work.

A women that puts me first kids second (Read this in a christian self help book and it really puts things in perspective) I always thought you put your kids first but this guy says you shouldn't. Kids still get 51% of your time but your spouse is your number two priority behind God.

Holidays

OMG Turkey day is around the corner and fiscally I'm so not ready for Xmas

Children

My daughter just played her first ensemble performance in band and she didn't screw up.

Work Stuff

Of course our last software update didn't go as well as I would have hoped.
Questions

Why can't we create or implement a messaging system that says Attention customers...the following changes are happening [insert timeframe]?

Why can't we listen to our experts and put them in a room together more frequently (I'm very busy of course but time could be made)?

Am I an expert anymore or just that "old" guy that's been around so long I've forgotten how to do things?

Why can't Synergy just work and keep working. That damn FLOSS stuff is going to kill me?

Why can't people just "snap" out of it (includes me sometimes)?

Why are ciggarettes so addictive?

Why don't I floss more often?

Why does every headset I buy suck?

Why can't I drink coffee at every meal?

Posted by Jeff Estes wishing you would subscribe to my blog and sponsor my lunch breaks.

Weird as Hell - Picasa in German

2008-09-16T20:43:00.000-05:00

I don't know why but My Picasa Web Album at Google is in German and I have no idea how it happened or how to change it.

Does anyone that reads my blog read German? Please help me out.

Posted by Jeff Estes wishing you would subscribe to my blog and sponsor my lunch breaks.

One more thing

2008-07-29T22:03:00.000-05:00

Why do I notice shit when I'm proofing post that are only painfully obvious after I post it like Grammatical and Spelling errors. Oh well, I'll leave the grammer snafu's where they lie/lay are lain (whatever).

The english language is so ~~fucked~~ jacked up.

Note to self: I mentioned this earlier at work but whoever invented the air conditioner deserves a huge ass reward.

I don't care what that guy got paid. It wasn't enough. I think that air conditioning was the greatest invention that man ever gave to his fellow man. If I ever become a multi-trillionaire I'm going to hunt down the guy that invented the air conditioners family and give them millions of dollars as a thank you from America.

God bless the A/C

Posted by Jeff Estes wishing you would subscribe to my blog and sponsor my lunch breaks.

...therefore I am

2008-07-29T21:27:00.002-05:00

I think it's due time that a spent a little serious introspection time on myself here on this blog. Looking back on my life I like to think that I take pride in myself and my actions.

I think that on the outside my life seems right. Some people look up to me. I'm moderately successful, a number of people (coworkers, family, strangers, customers) value my insights and opinions.

I have had a very wide range of opportunities that I've taken and some that I've passed on. Most of these experiences have taught many things. How to enjoy life, how to tackle adversity, how to value family, and many other numerous things.

With all this positive input from so many various sources I'd be happier.

I mean we all choose to be happy or unhappy but where and how does one find happiness. For some it's the way they look, for others its the quality time spent doing things for themselves, for some it's instant gratification (shopping, drugs, food, sex, whatever).

I have two wonderful children. I have family that loves me. I have the respect of my peer group. I'm still not that happy.

I've chased happiness for years and it still seems illusive and just beyond my "grip". For those of you that know me my life is pretty much an open book. I talk about almost anything on almost every subject on planet Earth. I do not profess to be an "expert" in hardly anything, but I do have a large amount of trivia and minutiae up my sleeve, and for everything else I have the gift of gab to fight through it or convince you I'm right.

I'm still not that happy. I know that most of you know that I was involved with another women for many many years and that that relationship is over but I just couldn't seem to let go. I find it hard to let go of things that I cherish. Maybe this is why I'm a pack rat and I just can't release things that I actually "own" and "control". Maybe my problems are pathological or psychological (I get those mixed up)

I know for a fact that I derive a large amount of pleasure from the affection of my mate/significant other/spouse/girlfriend. Is this wrong? Maybe but it is how I'm wired. I think the real root of my issue is not that I feel alone and bereft of love and affection but the fact that at a fundamental level I've been "rejected" by someone I care deeply about.

That relationship is truly over and I really, really need to let it go. It's very hard for me but I think I really understand that now. I made some mistakes, we all do. I think that biggest mistake to date has been that I just don't know when to quit or let go.

[note to self] let it go.

For those are just dying to know. I AM NOT PERFECT. I MAKE MISTAKES. I will continue to MAKE MISTAKES.

What does it mean to pine away for someone anyway? Would I take her back if she asked me to today? Yes I would. Let's be honest she is the mother of my children. I do love her. I miss her dearly. Was she the right women for me? I don't think you can really know that. Where we meant for each other? I can't be sure. Was our relationship good for each other, probably not. Does that really matter to me? No.

Now the real question? Am I really moving on? YES!

I have to do this for me. I'm tired of crying about what I've lost and I need to focus on what I have now and what I have to offer someone else.

Things that I have to offer:

A messy house (seriously my place is a grade A fucked up mess)
About 9 computers in various states of near death.
A huge debt that I still owe from my 1st wife.
Lots of emotional baggage.
A slightly used and paunchy cat.
A veritable treasure trove of Trivia.
A great sense of humor.
A man with a good enough job and the ability to stay valuable and gainfully employed.
The beginnings of a retirement.
Arkansas 16th most dysfunctional family on my mothers side.
A paid Napster subscription.
A decent collection of MP3's
A movie buff that hasn't seen that many movies in the last decade.
Did I mention my house cat is slightly neurotic?
The back of an 80 year old man.

I'm sure I'll think of some other stuff.

Seriously I'm not a bad guy once you get to know me.
Note to self: Pay my water bill

Posted by Jeff Estes wishing you would subscribe to my blog and sponsor my lunch breaks.

Compressed Air + Waffles + Password Hacking

2008-07-18T16:45:00.003-05:00

Ever wonder exactly what the hell is in a can of compressed air? Hit the link below:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R134a

Scary but cool shit huh! Who comes up with this shit. Between bottled water and air I don't know which guy will earn more street cred for coming up with simple but cool and profitable as hell ideas.

A funny thing happened to me on my way to the waffle house. First let me say that for a smart guy I'm a complete and utter dumbass. I'm always leaving shit on laying around on other peeps desks like my pens, cellphones, coffee mugs, laptops, chargers, etc. I'm always forgetting to pay my bills and bill my customers. Case in point I come home today and I'm without power (shut off due to non payment). I'm this is fucking incredible how does one just forget to pay his bills. I mean I've got the money in the bank and now I'm home and completely without power. The real shitter is that I'm switching banks from Bank of America to a local branch in my home town and since I work so late on Tuesdays and Thursdays I'm unable to pay my bill at the local quick pay center since they are closed. So now I'm going to have to stop by the quick pay center and pay my bill first thing in the morning so no Electricity for the Estes to keep his house cool.
Jeff Estes ====>> complete idiot!

Now I'm sitting at the Waffle House ====> I'm hungry and they have power. I'm also blogging this from my wifi card whilst wondering how much of my fridge food I'm going to have to chunk out tomorrow.

While I'm sitting her the waitress says hey are you a computer guy? Of course I say that I dabble a little bit with computers. She says in an conspiratorial and whisper like kind of way "do you hack computer passwords?" I whisper back and lean in and say "of course I do but you can't tell anyone."

"She says how much will you charge me to hack my laptop password?"

I whisper back, "I normally charge one hundred dollars, but if you'll let me camp out here and comp my meal I'll do it for no charge".

She beams with glee, and says "You don't have to tip me either".

Now I'm waiting on her boyish friend (She makes it real clear that he's not her boyfriend) to bring the laptop up here to hack it up.

I of course have my Password hacking CD in my backpack so here I sit waiting on Godot.....

Posted by Jeff Estes wishing you would subscribe to my blog and sponsor my lunch breaks.

For all you .DOCX dumbasses

2008-07-11T22:37:00.003-05:00

Attention computer users!

If your one of those stupid asses that doesn't pay attention then Mount Up!

When you save a file please pay attention to a few of the following things:

What file type am I saving this file as?
Who am I going to share this file with?
Does my recipient have to use windows, linux, or a (god forbid) a mac to view this file?
Do I really need all this bloated ass extra code to work this file or am I just using Bold, Italic, and basic formatting?
What other choices are available for this file. WTF is wrong with just using an RTF format?

I bring this up because I probably receive about 4 or 5 documents a day from people that are sending shit in the .[whatever]X format.

What is the .[whatever]X format. you say? It's the new (proprietary) closed (not open) format from windows. It's also the default choice for all file types in the version of Office. You know that 300+ dollar version with the fancy "ribbon" that eliminates the old File, Edit, View we've all come to know and love.

This happens almost every time a new version of the Office suite comes out, and its so fucking annoying I want to beat someone to death with a spork whenever I run face first into it.

I mean seriously, I understand why people might not want to use .txt files. I finally gave up saving everything as a .txt file about a year ago and converted myself into an RTF man. Even more recently I've been forcing myself to convert stuff into a .doc format to better integrate with Sharepoint Services at work for maximum document flexibility, but this .docx shit has me at my last straw.

So please, please, please do everyone (except for those boys in Redmond) a favor and do the following things if you love yourself, and un-spaded animals everywhere:

Stop buying MS Office
Use an open or free sourced alternative like Open Office, AbiWord, Google Docs, ThinkFree, the list goes on and on....
Save your files into the most agnostic, and Open Sourced alternative you can find like .RTF, .CSV, .PNG, whatever
Don't get crazy ass stupid with formatting unless you really, really need to, like if you're making a brochure or something better intended for slick publications like marketing fluff, or printed/bound user documentation.
Try to stick with W3C formatted HTML files that don't force end users to use IE.
At least include a link to the Office Converter Pack if you're too stuck up to not use a .X formatted MS file type.

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Website shit

I finally broke one of my own websites. Who would of that something as a one line .PHP file like:
register_globals = off

Was gonna save the day?

I'm experimenting with Drupal at my www.jeffestes.org site now. I really, really dig it. There are lots of cool kick ass sites using Drupal but I kind of lack CSS skills at the moment to make mine look cool.

I also registered a new kick ass domain that I'm digging called wootninja.com I've got nothing loaded at the site and I'm going to be experimenting with a CMS there soon.

I also bought KelvinBattles.com to give my friend a hard time. So keep an eye out for some funny shit there soon.

I'm kind of pissed that I volunteered to teach a software class in the morning on a Saturday, but oh well.

Jlo - I didn't mean to diss you by skipping you on the Sonic run today so I'm sorry :) + my posts can't always be witty and funny.

My trainee has thrown up her own first webpage at Holliedavis.com so check it out.

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I'm desperately trying to "scratch" up some money to help ship my Mom's care from Oakdale CA to Arkansas next week so help a brother out and sponser my lunch a couple days next week.

Plus I'm also two weeks behind at my daycare so I could use a couple Benjamin's if you've got some green laying around.

My After Dark business is coming along fairly well and I'm thinking about a redo of the www.jeffestes.com website but I'm not sure If I want to go with a static page, something Flashy, something CMS like Drupal, or just a real elaborate blog. Don't you worry though the scoolio blog will always be rolling out hard but maybe at a new domain like www.scoolio.com since I discovered that WORDPRESS has a built in Blogger transport tool.

My personal life still feels like a disaster but I should be grateful that I have 1.5 children that love and appreciate me. My life could always be so much worse.

Work Update: We should have a new manager soon. I was kind of pulling for an update today from the C-Level people but that didn't happen so we'll see what evolves next week.

I'm still thinking that I've got less than two years before I'm able to quit my job and go full time with my computer business. Only time will tell.

My World of Warcraft guild is officially up and running full time now. So if you're interested in what WOW geeks do late at night and during the day in Azeroth then run on over to our guild website and check it out.

That's it so keep it real.

Posted by Jeff Estes wishing you would subscribe to my blog and sponsor my lunch breaks.

Morning Commute

2008-07-07T22:20:00.002-05:00

On my way to work this morning I noticed that my front left tire was looking a little "tired". I decided to swing into my local gas station and fill it up.

Lo and behold they wanted .75 cents (that's three quarters btw) to air up my one little tire.

I'll admit it's been awhile since I used an air compressor at a gas station but I remember back when you could go to a gas station and find not only gas, but washing fluid and a squeegee, with paper towels, and an air compressor. Now you're hard pressed just to find gas and a squeegee.

So in my cheapness I decided to roll into another gas station. Wouldn't you know that I had to hit over six gas stations to find a station with free air?

Just in case your wondering the Gas Station in the parking lot of Harvest Foods on Kiehl was the big winner of give Jeff free air today.

Of course .75 cents was the highest price I found. The average price was .50 cents and I didn't find a single one for only a quarter.

Sheesh.

I really had it in me to rant and rave on some other stuff like my inability to rent Donnie Darko from the local movie rental places, and "Gamer fatigue" but alas my gamer shoulder is killing me from the holiday weekend (Woot for Steam's free Day of Defeat weekend!).

Speaking of woot I did pick up a fat dirt ass cheap GPS unit for my car from Navicon on Woot.com's website. If you haven't checked out Woot it's worth making it your home page. They offer only one item a day for a dirt cheap price. Sometimes it's new, sometimes its a refurb, but it's always a steal. Sometimes you'll find vacuum cleaners, or blenders, or GPS units, or even stereo systems!

I also picked up the movie Shark Tale to watch with my son tonight. I LOVE kids movies! They are so funny. Will Smith is a genius!

One last thing. Today I walk into one of the training rooms that I sometimes use and one of the new students says hey I know you! You're that guy at the pool with the laptop. Damn! I can't even escape my geekhood at the pool. What's the world coming to?

Posted by Jeff Estes wishing you would subscribe to my blog and sponsor my lunch breaks.

...a little less conversation

2008-06-10T23:18:00.004-05:00

I apologize to the blogger faithful. My posts have been irregular at best, and a little vague and ambiguous at their worst.

Quick things:

Gas is 4.oo dollars a gallon here in Arkansas so deal with it and buy smaller more fuel efficient cars.
Go rent Who Killed the Electric Car (documentary)
How on earth is our department without a manager again? (This will get it's own dedicated post later)
I stopped doing the online dating thing a couple weeks back. Sorry ladies deal with it.
I've been using facebook more and more to stay in touch with friends and its so much better than micro-blogging (Twitter, Jaiku, Pownce) No clear winner here yet so I'm not releasing my Micro Blog handle....yet ----> Mr. Needle
Contrary to popular believe LeeR is not a serial killer (Seriously we did lunch and I'm alive)
Mr. B please don't go.
Open Letter to Bob please don't vibrate away you will get a dedicated post :)
I've changed cars again from my 4 door sedan to a 2 door with a moon roof and pop up headlights and I still don't feel "cool enough"
It costs almost a grand to ship a car from California to Arkansas just in case your wondering.....I've paid the deposit now I've got to scratch up the balance due COD.
Go easy, go Greyhound from AR to CA is almost 200 bucks and a just an hour shy of a two day bus ride minus showers......yuck!
http://www.redbox.com/ is way cooler than http://www.blockbuster.com/
Pirates will never be cooler than Ninja's .....Sorry new guy get a grip.
Every cool pirate you can think of is a Ninja in disguise.
Every Ninja you think you've seen is actually a Pirate minus the Ninja Training in a cheap suit. The only time you'll see a real ninja is when he's just delivered the fatal death blow.
Being on call and working the day shift is the definition of suck.
I'm still madly in love with my X.
Are you reading this blog at my blog site or have you merely subscribed to my feed.
IF anyone on Earth that reads this blog has found a blog transport tool for blogger please shoot me an email.
Does anyone really, ever play Halo3 on the expert level? I mean seriously. If you can beat Halo3 on expert level get a real job like solving the World Peace Problem or eliminate World Hunger or at least go do something important like kill Rush Limbaugh over there at the EIB network (yea I'm a Democrat deal with it)
The next time you go reef diving carve Steve Prutzman's name in the reef and send me a screenshot.
My digital camera is supposed to work underwater but do you think I'm actually dumb enough to try it?
I'm using Safari right now to see If I could live with the Second Generation iPhone.
Why does Steve Jobs always wear Black Turtlenecks? He's not that cool.
Are you using Vista now? Do you like it for work or for home?
Good guys don't finish last but they sure as hell don't get splashed with Champagne at the finish line.
Why on Earth would I pay for something If I can get it for free legally.
If you're using a P2P network to steal music please stop right fucking now and spend some money. Shit you people are pissing me off.
If you see me at work reading something while I'm walking that is code for please don't stop and ask me a question I'm too busy to talk to you.
It's been at least a week since somebody took me to lunch did you NOT get the memo?
Is that new Sushi place in Cabot any good?
I was just talking about why I hated James Joyce
Yes that little piece of paper is really called a "chit" Did you think I make this shit up?
Balderdash is way cooler than scrabble but a hell of a lot less portable.

That's it for now. I really, really, really need to be in bed.

Posted by Jeff Estes wishing you would subscribe to my blog and sponsor my lunch breaks.

Update 101

2008-05-13T21:57:00.002-05:00

I'm still here. It's just been hectic.

I've moved out of my old house and into a new apartment. I've lost about 80 square feet of space but now I don't have to sweat maintenance any more. Apartment living has it's pro's and con's.

I'd like to push a big shout out to my boy Kelvin, Father Time (Gman), Gumby, and my dad for making my move possible. I'd also like to give a shout out to my Doctor for hooking me up big time with the prescriptions.

I'm currently whacked out on med's since I hurt my back moving and then completely destroyed in a fight with an office chair. Being on high on med's is actually kind of cool in a detached, OMG why is everyone talking so slowly, kind of way.

We have a pool here in the apartment complex and it's like 20 feet from my front door. Way cool!

I'd like to shout out to my boy DJ Wes Wood. We miss you on the help desk, you will be sorely missed. I hope you enjoy this worldwide walkabout your on. Good luck and god bless you Wes.

In an illegal file sharing kind of way I wanted to let everyone know that www.allofmp3.com is still around but it's hard as hell to recharge your account. I finally depleted my funds and now I'm jones-ing to refill my balance. I'm experiment with some PayPal like Russian sites that will accept American credit cards.

I'm still hoping that Heidi finds herself soon and realizes that I'm worthy of her love and affection. I know it's pathetic but I still love her.

I got a new guy on the help desk that I've started training today. He's pretty damn sharp on the technical side so the first couple of lessons should go quickly since I don't have to spend so much time on the network 101 and troubleshooting 101 stuff.

I've still got boxes everyone in my house so I don't know how soon I'll actually be settled and moved in but I can't wait.

I hear my bed calling my name so I'm going to cut it short. Good night.

Posted by Jeff Estes wishing you would subscribe to my blog and sponsor my lunch breaks.

OMFG Tornados! Where is Dorothy! Toto! My Red Shoes!

2008-04-10T11:34:00.002-05:00

HR just came down and said stop what you're doing and move to the middle of the building. So right now everyone in the company is off the phones and not taking phone calls and just sitting in the middle of the building waiting to die. Is this my last post?

Will scoolio ever blog again? Will we have a job tomorrow? How the hell will I ever get out of the parking lot again? I'm trapped. I'm hungry. I will starve to death in this building with hundreds of co-workers.

Just the thought of the hundreds of pins and paper clips whirling through the air to impale us into little huddled bundles of fleshy pin dolls just scares me. All we lack is the flickering light and moody, eerie music.

Is this the end? Has Ragnarok arrived? Is this the beginning of Armageddon? Have some of my coworkers already been taken up in the rapture?

Tell my children I love them and tell my X that she was my only true love and I'm sorry if I ever hurt you.

Tell my dad that one time he whipped me when my brother did it still troubles me to this day. But I did learn that life is unfair and full of injustice.

Tell my Mom that I always know she loved my brother more and its ok. I still love her.

Tell my neighbor I'm sorry I never fixed his computer and its just sitting there in my den of inequity rotting away at the core while I neglect lying in bed wondering why I don't ever floss.

Posted by Jeff Estes wishing you would subscribe to my blog and sponsor my lunch breaks.

No life Level 99

2008-04-08T20:06:00.002-05:00

I'm a nerd/geek. I'll admit that. On a nerd scale I'm kind of up there.

Click this link and check out the coolest, most awesomeest, level of nerd fiefdom one could ever hope to achieve. It's a you tube link if you can't get there key this in your browser when not at work:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DmWqlKyVEV8&feature=related

(It's streaming media from youtube)

The sad part is that I wish I could do this too. :(

Props to Wes Wood at www.weswood.com for the use of coolest, most awesome phrase at work today.

Posted by Jeff Estes wishing you would subscribe to my blog and sponsor my lunch breaks.

Tornadic Damage and my Crappy Power Grid

2008-04-06T15:58:00.002-05:00

We recently experienced a scary episode with a tornado here in Cabot. Being an Arkansas means living with Tornados. They kind of just come with the territory. Kind of like people on the coast live with Hurricanes. The scary part about tornado's is the lack of warning. I mean Hurricanes don't exactly "sneak" up on you.

This tornado actually touched down very close to us and did an extreme amount of damage. We had roads closed for over two days due to trees obstructing the roads and downed power lines. I went without power for over 36 hours!

Now that the power is back we are living back at home again minus ALL the food I had in the fridge. We actually saved some food by stowing into a cooler with ice but I couldn't save everything so my "fridge" got the trash can purge. At least I have more room in there now.

I wanted to thank the Pelton's for letting us camp out at their place Friday night while we waited on Entergy to restore power.

I think I'm going to give up on Windows Live Writer for a bit. Too many issues with their implementation of the blogger api. But instead I'm experimenting with Safari right now. I think I'm going to turn my weekends into Safari only time for a bit. Just to give the browser a test drive. As a matter of fact I'm posting this from Safari right now.

That's it for now. Later.

Posted by Jeff Estes wishing you would subscribe to my blog and sponsor my lunch breaks.

Posting via Windows Live Writer

2008-04-02T22:30:00.005-05:00

Microsoft is finally "getting it" I think.

[Reposted minus funky css stuff]

WYSIWYG = What you see is what you get. Tonight I'm posting this from the new Windows Live Writer. It's pretty freaking cool. I've blasted Windows for a long time because its fun, but I'll tell you those boys in Redmond have come a long way. This Windows Live Writer is pretty cool. The setup was fairly problematic but I figured out my problem in under five minutes so it wasn't seamless but it wasn't simple either. The problem I ran into was my feed URL that I had to plug into Windows Live Writer (WLR). I had to view the source code on the blog to get it because for some reason Blogger's Control Panel didn't just give it to you in the GUI. For posterity's sake my feed URL is

http://www.blogger.com/feeds/8117340/posts/default

I guess everyone uses unique id's that don't translate well and this is mine.

I may have to go back and adjust this post if the formatting is jacked, but oh

well what's life as a tech if you don't experiment right? I'm not doing a

huge post tonight because I'm exhausted and I'd be pissed if this post

got "lost in translation". I'm deliberately misspelling words to see how well

WLR will pick up my typing missives. For my blogger faithful I'd like to say that

I'm in a happier place emotionally recently but I'm still poor and willing to be

taken to lunch.

Right now something is wrong wit the GUI on this live writer and my text seems

to be ignoring the margins of the template. Weird. Also I can't seem how to

figure out the text wrapping around the imbedded Windows Live Logo, but with any

new software "tool" there is always a learning curve.

So I'll apologize for the excessive carriage returns in the post but it's the

only way to jump back into the left portion of the posting template.

I've spent the last two nights de-lousing my house from head lice. Nasty

little fucker-roos I'll tell you.

I did plan on ranting and raving about Virus/Spyware Troubleshooting. Now that

I'm back on the helpdesk I see us doing a lot of troubleshooting when it comes

to virus Spyware issues and I just want to scream about the horrible inefficiencies

it introduces to call resolution. I honestly believe that a couple years ago we

provided a valuable service to our customers by troubleshooting those kinds of

issues, but I'm afraid we're just doing what we've always done and now we need to

re-examine why we are doing this for customers.

This WLR is cool but annoying me with the GUI issues so I'm going to cut this

post short and see if I can figure out the problem.

Good night and good luck.

Missing Posts

2008-03-26T18:48:00.000-05:00

It seems as if I'm "missing" some posts on my blog. A number of posts and comments seem to have disappeared mysteriously.

I'm looking into the issue and I'm trying to contact Blogger support but It brings up a good point. I never knew if the blogging thing would take root or not but now that I am a blogger and I don't control the "back end" of this blogging engine I have no control over the backup or restoration of my posting history.

I hope to God that I'm not the victim of some malicious intent but even if I was what can I do about it?

I've tried to contact someone at blogspot (Now a google company) but I can't seem to find a phone number or email address. I'm considering moving the posts over to a hosted domain or something that I can actually control but I'm only in the "consideration" phase right now.

If you know something about my missing posts please email me. I'd really, really like to get those posts back with the minimum amount of fuss.

I'm partly flattered if I've been the victim of a blogger drive by shooting since that would mean that I've been selected as a target.

I've got a LOT of personal family drama going on at the moment so I'll be brief with this post.

I would like to toss a shout out to the following people for the partial or full sponsorship of my Take Jeff to Lunch program.

Tony = Thanks for the BBQ lunch
Jody = Thanks for the fruit cup I liberated from your desk
Christina = Thanks for the Mexican Lunch it hit the "spot".
Jennifer = Thanks for the happy hour drink from Sonic. That tea i the bomb!

But hey there are two full days left to sponsor the Estes so get with it!

Posted by Jeff Estes wishing you would subscribe to my blog and sponsor my lunch breaks.

Spring Break Sleepovers

2008-03-24T21:29:00.001-05:00

Ah Spring Break!

Spring, for most people, is an great time of year. The winter chill begins to withdraw, you begin to enjoy the warmth the sun brings, your grass turns green again (or kind of green with pretty shades of weeds in my case), and a host of other things.

In my case, I tend to see the negative. I start to use my Air Conditioner again (more electricity), I have to start mowing again, My allergies flare up, and my kids need more things to do that involve spending money on outdoor activities.

In the spirit of being less frumpy I've allowed my daughter to have two friends stay the night tonight. This is very untypical for me since it's a work night but I thought I'd give it a shot since she got good grades, sleepovers are kind of rare, and she doesn't have a lot of good wholesome friends that I approve of.

Today she was actually outside playing with new people and seems to have made a new friend or two. Since she asked if this "new" friend could stay the night I thought I'd approve to let her get some social practice in friendship making. Regrettably, I think her social skills aren't as sharp as I'd like them to be so this is a good chance for her to sharpen those knives before she gets into big, bad world of nasty little Junior High kids.

I'll probably get very little sleep tonight but oh well, the things we do for our kids.

Work Update:

My new trainees have "hit the floor" and from here on out it's probably all On the Job Training for them. They are about a week shy of where I'd normally feel comfortable on training but oh well.

We'll see how they do now. Only time will tell.

That's it for now.

Posted by Jeff Estes wishing you would subscribe to my blog and sponsor my lunch breaks.

2008-02-24T21:08:00.000-06:00

E dating revisit.

Online dating is weird but kind of cool. Exchanging emails with people whom you've never met or even seen (no photo on profile) is cool.

Considering that the majority of communication is actually non verbal, being forced to rely on your skill with the keyboard is kind of a welcome challange. I think I do miss the idea of writing letters back and forth. I'm sure we all had pen pals in Grade School. I had forgotton how difficult and challenging it could be to express oneself with the pen. It really forces you to choose and evaluate your writing style more closely.

With email being nearly ubiquitious we tend to spend less time on substance and quality over the speed of the reply. What a shame that is. I fear that our childrens generation will slowly see writing skills atrophy over time in the current, always on, always available, internet connected world.

I find it very refreshing to actually meet someone online and exchange information about each other strictly in an electronic medium. It also forces you to evaluate or de-value the the attraction based solely on physical attraction. Do not mis understand me. I am sure that if a physical attraction did not exist the chance for attraction and mating would greatly diminish but at least you are putting forth more effort when you attempt to establish a line of communication first.

Edating's hidden cost: Time, Money. The majority of dating services have the bait and hook set well. You get a profile. You upload a photo. You begin to communicate via small innocuous winks, or woos, or blinks, or whatever they label the initial communication as. Then when you want to reply with substance you have to rely on one party being a subscriber who is aware of how to bypass the system when the recipiant is not a subscriber, or you have to pony up some dough. The clams can be substantial.

Match.com 34.99

Chemistry 49.95

Eharmony 54.99

Something weird has happened that I can't explain. I've had a post and a comment deleted. I didn't delete them. As a security precaution I've changed my password but I still don't know this happened. I'm looking into the issue.

Posted by Jeff Estes wishing you would subscribe to my blog and sponsor my lunch breaks.

Full Circle Jobwise

2008-02-19T22:15:00.000-06:00

Wow.

I'm back on the helpdesk again as their new Trainer/Mentor/Dude

It's kind of like finding an old pair of shoes that you put away and then you discover them again and realize that they are pretty comfortable and you kind of like the way they feel and wonder why you ever took them off.

Let's see how this pans out.

Life update:
I've been cruising the online dating scene and I guess you can't really call it dating if you haven't actually met anyone in person yet but it's kind of weird and fun at the same time.

I guess it's almost like cruising the bar/dance club scene like you did in your twenties but this time it's done from afar, anonymously, and without any sense of rejection and no rush. So in some ways its actually cooler than burning up gas and forking over dough for the door charge. Plus you don't smell like smoke and licquor when you get home.

To date i've checked out a number of dating sites like the ones you see advertised on TV and the ones you get in banner popups on the internet and they each have their pros and cons. I'll probably do a more comprehensive review of dating sites in a future post but here is the quick skinny for you blogger nerds that read my stuff and have wondered about online dating before.

If your like me and don't have a digital camera get one. You really need to include photos in your profiles so people can check you out
Then find a way to take a picture of yourself. Kind of hard to do really.
The hardest part I've found so far is to "advertise" your self properly. It's like writing your own job performance review but way harder.
There are weird people out there. I mean really weird.
Believe it or not lots of hot women will hit on you because your parents are right for every girl out there that isnt in to you there are lots that are into your type whatever that type may be.
Read the profiles of other people that share your gender to get a feel for the competitiion.
You might want to find a new dating email so that you don't accidentally expose too much info about yourself.
Dating sites cost money! The average price I've run into is around 20 to 80 bucks to get started with a full blown account. (good news is that you dont have to spend any money unless you actually want to talk to someone) Drive by clicks are free and most give free photo views.
When they hot chicks hit on you will need to fork over some dough.
If you try to send someone your email address the dating systems servers will strip the address@domain.com so you have get all sneaky, sneaky like eemail me like this hotguy [at] domain [dot] commm (figure it out)

Of all the dating sites i've checked I actually like the one at www.okcupid.com the most.

I'll update the faithful with more info later.

With the new job change and I'll I'm sure I'll have some more stories to share later.

To my recently unhired friends at my job I'm sorry dude that sucks, but you'll get a good job somewhere else I hope.

To my friend with the tragic accident you are in my prayers and I will come visit you soon. Godspeed on your wife's recovery.

Posted by Jeff Estes wishing you would subscribe to my blog and sponsor my lunch breaks.

Dazed and Confused

2008-01-06T23:51:00.000-06:00

Yea my faithful readers I have returned from the brink of iniquity.

I've missed so many huge moments with nary a post to read. Christmas, New Years Eve and Day.
You must be wondering just what did Estes do with all those days?

First of all I must tell you that my Children are enjoying their new shiny XBOX 360 and Rockband (best game every made). My daughter has discovered in one fell swoop in less than 4 minutes that Santa, the Easter Bunny, and the tooth fairy are all make believe (she was crushed). I've discovered that I have a weird affinity for Zombie Fiction (World War Z).

I have actually started socializing with Friends again outside of the home and away from WOW.

I have started going to the movies again (alone*sigh). There are plenty of eligible women of course but I'm not really ready to date. I thought I was but I'm not. It's pathetic but I'm still hoping and wishing that she'll return one day.

I made absolutely zero new year commitments. I am now one day into my payday and broke again.

I acquired a new client for my side business. Yea me!

That's it for my new year post.

PS Take me to lunch I'm broke.

Posted by Jeff Estes wishing you would subscribe to my blog and sponsor my lunch breaks.

Wishing doesn't change things

2007-12-15T21:52:00.000-06:00

Women are kind of like the weather.

They have seasons. They call them moods. They are predictable in a kind of funny way if you study them long enough but they still surprise you.

No matter what though you are never really prepared for those sudden changes. It seems like I keep getting surprised when I'm smart enough to stay on top of things.

So that's it. Nothing more today.

Posted by Jeff Estes wishing you would subscribe to my blog and sponsor my lunch breaks.

Savant

2007-11-03T17:48:00.000-05:00

Got 45 minutes? Watch this. It's worth it. Fucking incredible.
http://video.stumbleupon.com/#p=i85su1w6uz in case th link doesn't work.

Posted by Jeff Estes wishing you would subscribe to my blog and sponsor my lunch breaks.

Posted Live from Burger King

2007-10-24T19:20:00.000-05:00

OMFG

Couple of quick things.

If you are a business owner you need to recognize the wireless masses and have free open wifi at your business.

I live in a medium size town and almost no one has a published open wifi access point.

I discovered by accident that my local Burger King has open wifi and I have been a constant consumer of their stuff since. Letting your kids play in the indoor playground while I blog is uber!

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Sponsored Lunch Shoutout

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Jrose gets mad props for sponsoring my lunch today. He even drove us downtown for fat sushi. Get a grip people. Everyone needs to sponsor my lunches. I did get two other invites for lunch for Jason beat you to the punch. Come on. Send me an outlook invite early in the morning to secure your spot. Semi props to my boy Luke and Christina for trying to get me for lunch. How about tomorrow?

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Cool software you need to try/buy

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For the record. I hate buying software. I so prefer free or open source stuff. If I have to buy it I will. If something is close to good enough and free I'll run with it unless its just some killer feature I can't live without. Can't think of one good example but I'm sure it's out there. For the record I did buy my first web browser back when a web browser wasn't free. (Spry Mosaic Internet in a box from a local PC store).

Official software pick is Synergy.

It's a sourceforge product so it's 100% free and open. The software runs on two or more machines and it allows you to use/drive one keyboard Mouse across two or more different Monitor/Computers. So its kind of like a hardware-less KVM minus the hardware and cables. This also runs on multiple disparate Operating Systems. I'm running this on a Vista and an XP box. I have a friend who runs this on Linux and an XP system, and another developer who is running this on a Mac (Tiger) and a windows XP station. It's fat with a capitol P!

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Stuff that pisses me off

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Gas stations that slow down the gas when you aren't even close the amount you pre-paid. Example. My local gas station forces you to pre-pay. I go in and ask them to turn on the pump and they say how much? I say 11 gallons. They say How much? I say again, 11 gallons. They say sir how much is that? I say I don't know how much do you charge per gallon? They say well today it's 2.36 a gallon. I'm like Ok. That times 11. They say I don't a calculator. I say ok turn on the pump and I'll come back and pay. They say then tell me how much to charge. I said how about 2.36 a gallon. They say don't be a smart ass. I stare. I end up saying fuck it. Here is 20 bucks how about I buy 15 bucks and you give me back a 5 spot. I say this since they obviously can't do simple math.

They then take my money and make change. Yes I counted it just to make sure they didn't fuck it up. Then I stroll out to pump my gas.

As I stand there pumping I'm amazed at how fast the money gets burned up at the pump. Then I wonder about the warning signs on the pump and wonder how many dumb-asses killed themselves before they slapped some of the warnings on there. My favorite warning...If fuel catches fire while pumping do not remove the hose. Are you fucking kidding me. If I see fire shooting out of a working pump stuck in my gas tank my ass is taking off like an Olympic runner.

Anyway. As I stand there waiting for the gas to finish I see that the fuel magically slows down at .20 cents into my last pre-paid dollar. I have to wait for the last .80 cents to crawl down the hose into my car. WTF! Are you fucking kidding me. Is this a safety feature? Is this adjustable? What asshole set the gas to trickle out for the last 80 cents of a transaction? I understand slowing down the gas for safety or waste reasons but 80 cents? How about the last ten or twenty cents? Eighty! Seriously!

I almost walked back in there and demanded my 1/10 of a penny back for every gallon I pumped. Somebody is getting screwed here I'm sure.

To my friend that didn't get the job she applied for. I'm sorry but don't feel bad a lot of people apply for that job more than once before they get it. I'll help you out on the next round.

Posted by Jeff Estes wishing you would subscribe to my blog and sponsor my lunch breaks.

Dating Rulebook

2007-10-22T21:11:00.000-05:00

Quick props and shout out to my boy "Gumdog" for sponsoring my lunch today. Even though that dumb ass waitress fucked up my order it was still all good to have a sponsor. I'm think I'm gonna start throwing out shout outs every time someone sponsors a lunch break. If I looked out at my past sponsored lunches I'd have to say that my boy The "RedNeck" has sponsored more lunches than anyone else so come on y'all! Get a competition going on or something. Let's see who can take me to lunch the most!

Prize to the winner will be an all expenses paid lunch on my dime for a change!

============================================

Online Dating

============================================

I don't really understand the online dating thing anymore. How does this work nowadays. The last time I was on the dating scene was a loo00ng time ago.

Have the rules changed? The scene has definitely changed quite a bit. Things like speed dating, and online dating and or phone voice mail dating have been around long enough to be old card but back then you had to be weird, desperate, or just fucking loony to use those services. Now I see this shit on TV, and it seems like everyone is doing it. WTF!

I'm not sure if online dating is cool or not but I'm not so sure if its all that wrong to do or not. Almost everyone I've talked to tells me to do it but I don't know how I really feel about it.

Id much rather meet someone through a friend or social event. I might give the old online dating thing a whirl but I haven't really made up my mind yet on that one.

On a side note I've returned to work finally and man is it hard to catch up after a five day hiatus. JHChrist the number of emails I had to wade through was incredible. It was nice to be around white people again. :)

Of course everyone wanted to know why I was out for so long and incommunicado. I debated making up a funny story like I had been abducted by aliens or imprisoned in a Republican Re-education center but I just stuck to the truth.

Anyway that's it. I had planned on taking the kids shopping for costumes but the weather is but ass nasty so I'm gonna skip that and take care of it later in the week. I hope to god it doesn't rain out the holiday. My kids will be so pissed if it rains.

Posted by Jeff Estes wishing you would subscribe to my blog and sponsor my lunch breaks.

On my vacancy

2007-10-20T20:30:00.000-05:00

These last few days have been very difficult, and disturbing for me.

I have been absent from work since I've barely been able to function. I will not disclose many details to the internet public but I'm afraid we've had to commit my brother to a full time mental health facility.

My brother is no longer considered safe to the general public and we've been forced to inter him in a mental facility. I guess we, as a family, have reached the decision that we can no longer provide the necessary care for my brother in his current mental state. He will now become under the care, supervision, and guidance of the state in a controlled environment where he will not pose a danger to society. At this time we are no longer able to even visit him or communicate with him for an undetermined amount of time.

I'm finding it very hard to function at the moment. I've been kind of wandering aimlessly through the house wondering how this kind of thing ever happens to people. I've always looked at my brother through the "lens" of an older brother. It has been my job to look out for him, speak up for him, teach him to be a better person, and encourage him to do "the right thing".

Now I feel that I am forced to abandon him. I can't even speak with him anymore. One really begins to wonder about moral concepts and obligations we all have a member of a "normal and progressive society. Throughout time different cultures and societies have treated the mentally and physically disabled in different ways. Some cultures destroyed those that were "different", some cultures put their "untouchables" into special area's or conclaves or cities. Some cultures have even tried Eugenics like Nazi Germany.

In today's progressive society we have a lot of taboos and a culture of sensitivity towards those with mental defects.

This week my personal beliefs and convictions have been put to the test and I think I failed my own belief system. I do not know how to properly reconcile these problems.

Some things are so cut and dry for most of us. We know where we stand on the big issues.

Religion
Politics
Marriage
Capitol Punishment

Even the little issues

Housekeeping
Personal Finances
Hygiene
Work Ethic
Philanthropy

I mean if someone murders someone you know how you feel about it. If someone steals from you, you know how you will react. If someone slaps you, you cold-cock them.

Why is everything so much harder when it involves a family member. Even more so when that family member isn't in control of their own mind what do you do then? If my brother did something that was so easy for me "know" my reaction then why do I falter and stumble now.

I'm so confused and I have no-where to turn to. I've had numerous calls from friends during my work absence but I can't really talk about this stuff to them. Maybe if one of them had a similiar situation I'd reach out to them about this but their lives are not that complex and they can't really help me now. Normally when you hurt emotionally you have people that you lean on for support. A pet, a parent, a lover, a spouse. Since this involves my brother and my parents, and I have no lover/spouse/girlfriend that leaves my goldfish. Fuck that goldfish he's been ignoring me for over a year. I guess that leaves me, my online friends, and this fucking blog.

Posted by Jeff Estes wishing (just wishing)

Ben Folds Motherfucking Five

2007-09-17T23:23:00.000-05:00

This cover is fucking awesome. If you're work I'm sorry this is a youtube post of an NWA cover by Ben Folds Five.

If you don't know BFF then get a grip. If you don't know NWA then you must be under 30 and too young to read my angry fuck you blog.

If you're angry, bitter, or down just listen to some ben folds five. These guys are my heroes.

Cause bitches aint shit! (Thanks Easy-E)

Posted by Jeff Estes wishing you would subscribe to my blog and sponsor my lunch breaks.

Waiting For My Ruca

2007-09-17T22:26:00.000-05:00

Well, life is (too short), so love the one you got
'Cause you might get runover or you might get shot
Never start no static I just get it off my chest
Never had to battle with no bulletproof vest
Take a small example, take a tip from me
Take all of your money, give it all to charity
Love is what I got

*just listening to sublime and reminding myself that life is too short*

Posted by Jeff Estes wishing you would subscribe to my blog and sponsor my lunch breaks.

Rights, Responsibilities, Privilege, and Expectation

2007-08-20T22:33:00.000-05:00

Rights, Responsibilities, Privilege, and Expectation

--------------------------------------------
Small personal statement
--------------------------------------------

I discussed these tenets with my daughter tonight.

These are really just fundamental parts of living but to a child Its my responsibility to pass this knowledge onto my children.

I think that everyone understand these things but they can be difficult to explain and ever harder to help someone else comprehend.

I believe that the framers of our constitution understood these things and based on country on these principles. Forget all the wordiness of our constitution they sum it up under the "pursuit of happiness" part.

If you know what your rights are, and you know what your responsibilities are (Being a good citizen), you will also appreciate the privileges afforded to you, and understand what is expected of you.

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Stuff on my mind that I hate at the moment
---------------------------------------------

Being Broke as Hell
Being forced to Pre-pay for gas before I pump
Pre-paying for gasoline then having it slow down for the last 50 cents....(F*ing retarded)
Being misled
Being lied to for personal gain. Being lied to by an employer is different it's not personal
Letting your kids down because you're doing it for their own good
Having someone understand something so completely but still being unable to commit to it.
Going to bed with regrets.
Waking up and wishing you didn't regret it.
Needing medical care for a loved one, but not having insurance for it.

That's it.

I'm taking my Mom to the doctor tomorrow. I finally found the free (low income) health clinic. It's all the way in College Station (Ghetto).

I hope I don't experience fiscal anal rape after the visit is over.

BTW does anyone know how to get a W2 if you haven't been employed and don't have a copy of your W2 on file?

Posted by Jeff Estes wishing you would subscribe to my blog and sponsor my lunch breaks.

Sony Rootkit Fiasco

2007-07-10T10:14:00.000-05:00

Sony Rootkit Uninstall Here

What is the Sony Rootkit Fiasco Here

I'm fixing a laptop for a friend and their Optical Bay disappeared. The above links explain the why and how to fix it.

Posted by Jeff Estes wishing you would subscribe to my blog and sponsor my lunch breaks.

2 Cool things

2007-07-03T22:42:00.000-05:00

Couple of cool things. No anger this post (I swear)

Two cool things I wanted to share.

Chris Angel Mindfreak
Sonic Commercials

Magicians. What about Magic isn't cool. I have always been fascinated by Magic. I remember as a child watching Magicians at birthday parties, restaurants, and even live in Auditoriums like David Copperfield. I even watched that Kick ass movie the Prestige. Magic is just cool as shit. This Chris Angel cat is way uber and has mad skills. I don't know how he does it but I just can't stop watching the guy. A lot of his stuff is on Youtube and you ought to check it out.

Commercials. As your prototypical consumer of entertainment I enjoy Television and movies. A necessary evil of the "tube" is commercials. They pay all the big bucks so that we as consumers can enjoy subsidized entertainment. It's a trade off I'm okay with but I'm not ok with is Bad or sub par commercials. I could probably rant for hours about all kinds of social inequities in commercials (Sex-plotation of the female body [Superbowl ads], Child-centric [any kids show] advertising, Depression exploitation [stay up late and watch TV your either fat, poor, stupid, or unemployed]

Occasionally some ad critic on Madison Avenue (or wherever) comes up with a good ad or even better a good ad campaign. Lately I've really enjoyed the Sonic commercials. They are just witty and entertaining and they convey their point well. To the sonic ad execs I salute you. Please keep it up and bring back the Quizno subs monster. I miss him/her/it.

I also miss www.adcritic.com It used to be a free site but now you have to pay. I used to surf that site for hours just watching good American and European ads.

That's it. Enjoy the 4th of July!

Posted by Jeff Estes wishing you would subscribe to my blog and sponsor my lunch breaks.

Job Transitions

2007-06-28T23:38:00.000-05:00

Job Transitions.

Why does one change jobs?

What motivates you?

I was approached today by a high level exec about a job change within my current company. This is kind of unusual since I didn't solicit this invitation.

I'm not sure what to think about it. I wasn't given a formal offer letter yet but one is forthcoming shortly. Once it arrives what should I do?

I am not unhappy in my current position. I actually enjoy the shit out of what I do. It's fun to be a sysadmin. Don't misinterpret my mirth. It also sucks sometimes but all jobs have those moments of pure suckage.

I like the team I'm on. Yea I bitch bout a co-worker sometimes but that's mainly ribbing someone for the sake of just ribbing someone.

The soft sell pitch I received today was done properly in my opinion but It kind of forced me to re-evaluate the reasons you choose to stay or go in any given position or job.

What do you like about your company, job, co-workers, environment? What do you hate about it?

What would be the deciding factor in staying or leaving?

For some people it's Power. For some it's prestige, For some it's recognition or keeping up with the Joneses. For some people it's a sense of duty or honor. For most folks it boils down to Money.

I know that for me it's not Money but maybe that's being dishonest with myself. I'm really happy where I'm at at work but if the right dollar amount was thrown my way I'd be an idiot to pass it up. That begs the next question. How much is enough? 3 Grand a year, 10 grand a year, or even more. The weird thing is that I don't really know. I guess I'll wait and see and pray on it.

I re-read some of my previous post and I want to state that I was very angry and have been for awhile. I wish my situation was different but that's they way I feel.

If I could somehow pull off never seeing or speaking with her again I'd probably be OK but how can I raise two kids in two different households and not speak to her or even see her. Impossible. I want so desperately to just hate her to the core of her being but I can't I'm still in love with her and I hate myself for it.

I work with attractive women, I know attractive women that would love to be with me, but i don't want them. It's fun to imagine that I'd enjoy another woman's company but I don't see how I could do that and be honest with myself. Feeling a need for vengeance of some kind makes me feel petty but I swear that I want her to suffer one tenth of what I have just to spite her.

Enough of the self loathing. It makes me want to vomit.

As a full fledged nerd/geek I feel like I've reached that spot in my career that I always wanted to be in. I'm a domain admin. I have root rights to stuff I could never play with in a hobby like fashion. Why would I leave that world and go back to software expert/tester/advocate boy. Don't get me wrong I was really fucking good at that job and it was scary how well I could pull it off but do I want to re-enter that world? I guess that's the real question. Suppose that I had to do the same job for the next ten years and never change. Would I be happy in ten years as a QA/Tester guy or would I be better served as the always evolving/challenged/sysad guy.

I'd say Sysad all the way but what If I was paid handsomely for the other job?

What about my side business? Would this new job give me more time to work on that business?
Choices. That is what makes adult life so hard. As children we had choices but they were more like multiple choice. I parents and our environment what our choices were. As an adult it's more like ad-lib and fill in the blank.

My grandma used to say that Being miserable in Life wasn't about the choices you made but it was more about regretting the choices you didn't choose.

Regret is a bitch. I don't want to regret my choice.

I'd like to throw a shout out to my JW for sponsoring my lunch today. Thanks man.

Posted by Jeff Estes wishing you would subscribe to my blog and sponsor my lunch breaks.

Just a little sick

2007-06-25T21:26:00.000-05:00

What do you do when you are just a little sick.

I'm not dying but I feel like shit. I've bee sick for a couple of days and I finally get around to making a Dr's appointment but their systems are down. (Do they use my companies software)? Just kidding.

I know what will happen when I go to the doctor. He'll say stop smoking, work out more, lose some weight, and hand me 20 bucks so I can write you a prescription for some antibiotics and some cough medicine. Then I'll drive over to Walgreen's and hand them 20 or 30 bucks for the meds. For all its worth it will cost me time off from work and another 40 to 50 bucks in Co-pays.

My mom started uprooting bushes in my front yard. She's not going to ever by happy with the way this place looks.

Posted by Jeff Estes wishing you would subscribe to my blog and sponsor my lunch breaks.

Outlook Indexing

2007-06-19T09:29:00.000-05:00

Ok two things.

First I realized last night that my signature below had been spelling sponsor wrong. So sorry.

Second. Outlook doesn't seem to be indexing the mobile field. It does however seem to index the notes field. I'm going to look into this some more but thought I'd share it.

Posted by Jeff Estes wishing you would subscribe to my blog and sponsor my lunch breaks.

Sorry for the Delay - Welcome Chrome

2007-06-18T22:14:00.001-05:00

Wow I don't normally take such a large break between postings but this one is special.

So much has happened since my last post I'm not sure where to start so here it goes.

Ode to the "bowhunter". Jason I miss you. I hate the circumstances surrounding your exit and and the messy "wake" that followed you out but I think you are hell of a person and I miss the shit out of you. I wanted you to know that I respected and still look up to you as a boss, a coworker, and a friend. I hope that life treats you well and you continue to inspire other people to work harder and smarter. I'd work for you anywhere and anytime. I do miss you.

Jennifer - I have not forgotten your request for the difference between shallow and morals. I'm just not feeling witty enough to address that issue at this time.

To my "old but not forgotten" class of students. I swear that I'll get around to you finishing your class as soon as possible.

To my current class I hate that you guys are getting the "new" and abbreviated training class but you guys will do fine in the field once we get you out there but don't forget that we have 90 days from your date of hire to find a reason to fire you guys for being retarded so please don't make me look bad when you hit the road.

To the TSA thanks for jacking my shit at the security screening I really wanted that Gatorade drink and my fucking shaving toiletries that didn't meet the new and upgraded FAA requirements for liquids in a container. Seriously my shit wasn't dangerous and I had to replace that shit.

To Odio thanks for the kickass laptop messenger bag but I still miss my good ole faithful backpack and I think I'm going back.

To the admin team. Thanks for letting me use that switch to hook into our network. I know how hard it was to let me do that. Also thanks for the reminder calls late at night when I forgot that I'm on the VPN and violating our policy by establishing P2P links :)

To my new boss Paul. I know you don't read this blog but if you ever "discover" it then I think that so far you're doing a good job managing our team just please, please don't fuck it up.

To the "serial killer" on the helpdesk. Please don't cut me up into little pieces for destroying your 8Gig thumbdrive. I swear i'll replace it soon. *crosses fingers*

To the company that makes Rockband. Please for the love of god sell me a replacement foot petal cause I'll be uber pissed if I have to buy a new drum kit, guitar, and microphone because I mis placed my the damn footpedal.

To the Google dev team. Thanks for making my password reset so easy. If you've ever locked yourself out of your gmail account it's easier to reset the password than those guys over at redmond make it on their stuff. And I love the new Google Chrome browser but I do "miss" the plug in stuff.

To the open source crowd. Thanks for all the really cool freaking stuff you nerds make to please the "IT" crowd.

To the MS dev team for Office. For the love of all things holy give me a freaking overlay to make Office act like the old office. I still don't like using the fucking "Ribbon".

To the Projector Market: Do you really need to make the fucking replacement bulbs on printers so damned expensive! I mean you guys might as well get into the Printer Market to sell high priced ink.

That's it for now. I'm going to try real hard to make more regular posts again.

Posted by Jeff Estes wishing you would subscribe to my blog and sponsor my lunch breaks.

Fathers Day

2007-06-15T21:49:00.000-05:00

This is fathers day weekend.

Pretty cool that we get one day a year where we actually celebrate fatherhood. Now what is fatherhood. Some days it's the coolest job on Earth and sometimes it's the suck. I will say that being a father is right up at the top of my lists of thing's I enjoy the most. It's better than eating. It's better than sex (yea I'll admit that). It's even better than taking a piss after being at a ballgame for six hours.

Being a dad is awesome. Having a child or children that love and respect you is priceless. Having your son take a piss in your mouth when you're changing a diaper [not so cool].

I wouldn't trade it for the world.

To all you fathers out there please enjoy this weekend as a dad. If you're not a dad yet then please take your time and really, really enjoy life that exists before fatherhood. Have kids by all means but try to wait until your late 20's at least.

Happy fathers day everyone!

Posted by Jeff Estes wishing you would subscribe to my blog and sponser my lunch breaks.

Typical Work Day

2007-06-13T00:14:00.000-05:00

I just got home from work. It's 15 past midnight and I think that there is no such thing as a typical day. I had this weird impression of what life would by like as a SYSAD and boy was I wrong.

Dont' misunderstand me. I really, really like my job. I just had this weird idea that it didn't require so much maintainence. This job never stops. I've owned and maintained/managed my own computer for years and I just assumed that when you were responsible for a bunch of company machines life would be easier but instead I think it's exponentially harder.

It takes so much freaking time just to make sure shit keeps working. It's freaking amazing. I can't even imaging what life is like in a Data Center or at an ISP. It must be a total freaking nightmare.

[I'm not talking about my X in this post] She's gone and I have zero control over that so I have to move on. (Prozac FTW!)

I want to say it again. I really like my job. I wish that I could change certain things that might make life easier but I'm not sure what I'd change.

But I'll try anyway:

Don't let anyone purchase anything without your local sysad vetting how it will perform.
Give us time to test out shit before we go live in production with it.
Don't focus so much on downtime let's talk about how fast we can bring it back instead.
There is nothing wrong with Windows stuff.
Open source isn't always free.
If you are going to "go deep" with linux then bring in a team to backup your quarterback.
VOIP should be changed to OMFG-VOIP.
Really, do you NEED to have admin rights that bad.
Nothing is simple about file sharing.
Seriously, I need to have a ticket before I can help you.

Enough of that.

I'm tired, and I have to be at work tomorrow.

[Damn I was pretty angry in that last post wasn't I]

Posted by Jeff Estes wishing you would subscribe to my blog and sponser my lunch breaks

Prose or Prozac?

2006-11-07T01:04:00.000-06:00

Anger I summon thee.

I need you to sustain me and guide my hand.
Lo, I no longer have the fortitude to maintain my course.
I beseech thee to empower my mind, my arm, and my soul to overtake my destiny and wrest it from fate.

As the dawn fades and darkness approaches I fear my past and the future breaking of the sun.

Perhaps I should lie down and warm the dirt with my body or might I find some courage to face the sun, and look upon the field of my life with the hope that my choices were limited and my wisdom had not taken flight.

Guide me O lords, I beg you.

Posted by Jeff Estes wishing, just wishing.

Status Update

2006-10-29T12:46:00.000-06:00

No depressing shit this post I swear!

I'm trying real hard to move on so I'm going to try real hard not post manic-depressive missives on my blog anymore, but It's my blog so I'm allowed to post whatever the F I want.

Web Development - I was paid to write a website awhile back for one of my clients and I haven't done much work on it lately so I'm trying to pick back up on that job today.

I've been seriously pimping open source (Or at least GPL stuff) everything for the last couple of years but now I'm in a new position as a SYSADMIN at the same job and I have to take a different slant on those positions. Now that I'm part of a team responsibly for keeping workflows cranking I'm being sucked over to the Dark side of GPL and the open source community: Micro$oft Everywhere!

Now I have to try real hard to try to use Microsoft tools and "best practices" everywhere I turn. In light of that I'm trying to stop using NVU and move over to MS stuff like Microsoft Visual Development tools.

I did not know it but MS makes alot of their tools available for free with "light" versions of stuff. Now a "light" version of software in the MS world means limited connection or light load software so their "light" stuff can't handle as many simultaneous connections or hard core databases but they do work and they are free!

I'll try to post my latest web creations for perusal later.

I'm trying to snap out of my mental depression like a quaker would and work my ass off at home. I have been seriously neglecting my household duties and I tried to make up for that today by spending 2 straight hours doing nothing but housework. I barely made a dent but I did make a difference today.

Be nice to your kids and your admins. That's all for now. Have a nice day folks.

Posted by Jeff Estes wishing you would subscribe to my blog and sponser my lunch breaks.

How i feel.

2006-10-13T00:24:00.000-05:00

Where the rubber meets the road.

Breakfast at Tiffany's

2006-09-13T00:55:00.000-05:00

I just finished watching an older Audrey Hepburn movie called Breakfast at Tiffany's and I'm not sure how I feel about it.

In many ways it kind of hit me where it hurt in a couple of different levels. If you click on this blog post title it will take you to the Wiki entry on the movie.

I did some song lyric searching and I turned up these lyrics on this movie. I removed the chorus and, well just read them for what they are worth:

You say that we've got nothing in common
No common ground to start from
And we're falling apart
You'll say the world has come between us
Our lives have come between us
But I know you just don't care
I see you - the only one who knew me
And now your eyes see through me
I guess I was wrong
So what now? It's plain to see we're over,
And I hate when things are over -
When so much is left undone
You say that we've got nothing in common
No common ground to start from
And we're falling apart
You'll say the world has come between us
Our lives have come between us
But I know you just don't care

Sometimes I feel like we're close to tying everything back up and then sometimes I don't. I'm just so lost.

We had that you can date other people discussion but I don't even want to consider it. If I dated someone else it would be like throwing in the towel. What would I do if she started dating someone else. She say's she'd tell me but do I really want to know?

Enough of the depressing melancholy shit.

On a lighter note I got an "official" offer letter at work today. Cool thing was a typo. I was offered a six figure salary. Holy shit what a typo! We'll after a backspace key it was back down to a reasonable five figure number.

I need the life adjustment. I need to be more "available" as a father and maybe if I'm lucky as a husband.

I hate this. I really do. I hate feeling this needy about anything. Where is my resilliancy? Where is my "intestinal fortitude"?

I need to sleep but I can't.

Posted by Jeff Estes just wishing I wasn't dying on the vine.

Big 30

2006-09-09T20:33:00.000-05:00

Aclins Bday

Click here for coons with killing genes.

2006-08-22T13:08:00.000-05:00

Racoons killing your pets. That is so snakes on a plane.

Posted by Jeff Estes wishing you would adopt a pet killer racoon.

Joke from a friend

2006-08-18T15:35:00.000-05:00

Got this from a friend. And well. It's just funny.

Dear Tech Support: Last year I upgraded from Girlfriend 7.0 to Wife 1.0. I soon noticed that the new program began unexpected child processing that took up a lot of space and valuable resources.

In addition, Wife 1.0 installed itself into all other programs and now monitors all other system activity. Applications such as Poker Night 10.3, Football 5.0, Hunting and Fishing 7.5, and Racing 3.6.

I can't seem to keep Wife 1.0 in the background while attempting to run my favorite applications. I'm thinking about going back to Girlfriend 7.0, but the uninstall doesn't work on Wife 1.0. Please help! Thanks, Troubled User..... _____________________________________

REPLY : Dear Troubled User: This is a very common problem that men complain about. Many people upgrade from Girlfriend 7.0 to Wife 1.0, thinking that it is just a Utilities and Entertainment program. Wife 1.0 is an OPERATING SYSTEM and is designed by its Creator to run EVERYTHING!!!

It is also impossible to delete Wife 1.0 and to return to Girlfriend 7.0. It is impossible to uninstall, or purge the program files from the system once installed. You cannot go back to Girlfriend 7.0 because Wife 1.0 is designed to not allow this. Look in your Wife 1.0 manual under Warnings-Alimony/Child Support.

I recommend that you keep Wife 1.0 and work on improving the situation. I suggest installing the background application "Yes Dear" to alleviate software augmentation. The best course of action is to enter the command C:\APOLOGIZE! because ultimately you will have to give the APOLOGIZE command before the system will return to normal anyway. Wife 1.0 is a great program, but it tends to be very high maintenance.

Wife 1.0 comes with several support programs, such as Clean and Sweep 3.0, Cook It 1.5 and Do Bills 4.2. However, be very careful how you use these programs. Improper use will cause the system to launch the program Nag Nag 9.5. Once this happens, the only way to improve the performance of Wife 1.0 is to purchase additional software. I recommend Flowers 2.1 and Diamonds 5.0! WARNING!!! DO NOT, under any circumstances, install Secretary With Short Skirt 3.3 .

This application is not supported by Wife 1.0and will cause irreversible damage to the operating system!

Best of luck, Tech Support

Posted by Jeff Estes wishing I could upgrade my life.

Click Here for light reading on WOW addiction

2006-08-11T15:13:00.000-05:00

Thought for the Day from Allakhazam.com

When it rains alot in Mulgore is it
considered a Taurential downpour?

Posted by Jeff Estes wishing you would subscribe to my blog and sponser my lunch breaks or help me pay my WOW bill.

Quote of the day....Click Here to visit!

2006-08-11T10:11:00.000-05:00

"On my income tax 1040 it says 'Check this box if you are blind.' I wanted to put a check mark about three inches away."
- Tom Lehrer

Taken from this site.

Posted by Jeff Estes wishing you would subscribe to my blog and sponser my lunch breaks.

http://www.artlebedev.com/portfolio/

2006-08-09T17:05:00.000-05:00

I've blogged about this before. But it's deserving of another one. This guy is a designer that just makes plain kick-ass stuff.

Check him out at http://www.artlebedev.com/portfolio/

You must look at the keyboard he designed.

Posted by Jeff Estes wishing you would subscribe to my blog and sponser my lunch breaks.

Click Here for MS Tribute Video

2006-08-07T19:24:00.000-05:00

Hit the link for a youtube video clip from Letterman. Âhilarityy ensues.

Nothing pity today. Â Socially my life is still in shambles and my back is still bitching about the abuse I put on it. Â I've got serious pain meds which I should be taking liberally but I'm using them in moderation right now.

I'm still pimping Opera again now that they have released a new version. Â I've stolen a new laptop and I'm so crushing on this Dual Core processor. Â I can already see an amazing improvement over my older single core processor. Â Work is going well. Â We're still missing a CEO so if you know a CEO who is looking for a new job please send him/her/it my way. Â This new Level 2 Helpdesk is working out pretty well so it's too bad I'm getting yanked off the team to do this "other thing".

Career Changes:

A good friend of mine is looking to leave the "food industry" and move into IT.completelycompletly sold on getting into the helpdesk gig (Of course I tried to explain the new kind of hell it can be). So if you know any hiring manager looking for former food guys who are willing take serious paycuts to get abused on a help desk please drop me an email.

English Lessons:

I took a typing test online the other day and scored really well 87 WPM with 2 errors but I'm a little pissed about the errors. Â I got the 2 errors for using two spaces after the end of a sentence. I have to tell you that when I learned howsentences sentances I was "instructed" to use two spaces to help the reader discriminate sentencee sentance ended and the other onapparentlyAppearantly the "rules" have changed and I was never notified. Â This has driven me to think about who makes up the rules? Â Is it the MLA?

I know that I used to refer to the MLA rules when writing papers but I mewhat'sriously whats the big freaking deal? Â I also remember learning the State abbreviations and how to write return addresses. Â Back when I was taught how to do it ArkNotas was Ark. not AR. Â So who decided to shorten states and street designations? Â

I don't know but I betcha it was a white guy!

I got asked about who my webhost of choice today was and for the record it's still 1and1. I was digging around in my control panel at 1and1 and I discovered that they have added some new features like wordpress blogs (Sweet) and free access to GoLive and Adobe Elements (cha-ching). Â So I'm prolly going to get to flex some more digital photo editing and maybe even move my blog over to www.scoolio.com and use Wordpress (Sorry guuuuys).

Quida (Yes in French and German) is probably going to survive her exploding organ experience. Â She's been moved to the rehab section of the hospital. Â Good News.
Posted by Jeff Estes waiting on his meds to kick in.

Click here and buy me a copy of this please!

2006-08-01T23:19:00.000-05:00

OMFG please click this link and buy me a copy of this DVD set.

I absolutely fucking love the guys over at Sysinternals and I can't believe or I guess I can believe that Bill Gates just bought this company and all their Intellectual Property.

I hope and pray that Microsoft incorporates their toolset for free in an upcoming Service Pack or the next version of windows (Vista?).

IF you've never had the privledge of using any of Sysinternals Tools then you are doing yourself a dis-service. These guys are geniuses and I swear to god that if you work on a helpdesk and learn to use these tools you will make love to yourself cause you'll just be that good.

Posted by Jeff Estes who is crunching hard for cash right now.

Planes, NeverLost, Airports, and Hospitals

2006-07-31T22:20:00.000-05:00

When it rains it pours...

I just got back recently from a work related trip and the trip itself went fine but anything that involved an airport or an airplane just plane sucked ass.

I'll try to rant briefly with a quick, lightning recap:

*Arrived at airport and TSA agent treats me like a terrorist
*We land and rent car with NeverLost...still get lost.
*Get Hotel in Newark and discover that the hotel is nice but Newark, NJ is the armpit of the "garden state".
*We arrive on jobsite and client doesn't let us even see the software we're software we are supposed to be re-designing.
*Get to hotel and realize I left my travel kit. Of course the airport has a "gift shop". Deodorant costs 7.00 bucks (Prison pricing).
*Move to new hotel since the armpit hotel is like a 45 minute commute to the client site.
*Never lost routes me to a toll way where I discover that tollbooth willie doesn't take any kind of credit card.
*Arrive at new client site and get new hotel (only after the sixth visit do I find one that comes in under budget that isn't booked 100% with Japanese tourists).
*Continue to visit various client sites (All over NJ) and discover that along with my Shaving Kit which I left in Arkansas I also discover that I left all my charging cables so in short order my cell phone and laptop battery go the way of the dodo-bird.
*Work all day with clients and most of the night to return to my room which for some reason or another smells like a mildew experiment.
*Next day we finish up with this client and try to fly home.

[So begins my nightmarish trip home]

Let me step back a second and relate to you that we moved this trip up due a client schedule conflict and the intention was for me and work buddy to fly out for a Wednesday-Friday trip which was supposed to have me home on Friday Night and I was supposed to fly back out on Monday for the rest of the week.

*Arrive at airport around 3 PM for 5 PM flight direct to LR.
*Departing flight is delayed about every 30 minutes.
*After 5 hours of incremental delays the flight is cancelled. Of course this is the last flight out of NJ to LR and I've already turned in my rental car so I'm basically stuck at the airport.
*Of course almost every South or Western Flight is cancelled so the airport can't get me home until 7pm OR SO the next day. To top it off I'm told that to get home I have find a way to the LaGuardia airport.
If you're not real keen on airport Geography I'm in NJ and LaGuardia is in New York.
*Now I rent a car at the last minute and try to drive into New York after Midnight, with no idea where I'm going to find a hotel I've never been too to catch a flight, which If I'm luck will get me home late on Saturday.

Next Morning - Saturday - After driving to NY.
*Arrive at airport with plenty of time to spare.
*The new flight I'm supposed to catch is no longer a direct flight. It's now connecting to Houston. Geography check. Houston is way past the LR airport.
*After we pull out of the gate (on time mind you) we park on the tarmac while a storm rolls in.
*Storm lasts three hours. Before we finally get to take off we do the math and figure out that unless we can teleport the plane to Houston we've already missed our connecting flight to LR.
*Arrive at Houston and we discover that we are now on booked on the last flight out of Houston to LR. Bad news it's storming and the Layover is now Seven Hours.
*When I finally arrive in LR and walk in my front door it's after Midnight and I discover that My Air Conditioner is out and I'm due to catch a plane to NJ again in less than 24 hours.
*Did I mention also that after all my luggage schlepping and airport/plane travel I've someone managed to throw my back out of whack!

I've got a lot more but I'm tired now and I'll sum up the rest to say that on each and every flight going and coming the next week the best thing that happened was that I had a 4 hour layover.

Now I'm finally home a week later and my back is still pretty much fucked and my mother in law is now in the hospital having emergency surgery. She is now having something one or two organs removed and she will probably need a some kind of external fluid bag for the rest of her life. What else is going to go wrong.

Did I mention that my new job which I've only held for almost a month is now being replaced! I just want some normalcy in my life!

Posted by Jeff Estes wishing that my life would just return to normal.

William Shatner says Jeff is not available right now..

2006-07-27T11:45:00.000-05:00

I don't know how long this link will be up but I would pay "good" money to have Mr.Man record all my outgoing messages.

Posted by Jeff Estes wishing you would too would watch Star Trek and spread good-will towards all members of the United Federation of Planets!

Photoblogging on my new almost old phone

2006-07-25T22:11:00.000-05:00

You know you want one

2006-07-11T11:47:00.000-05:00

You have seen the "Godfather" haven't you?

You know you want one of these.

Horse Head Pillows

I got this from an editorial piece in the Good Morning Silicon Valley Newsletter.

Posted by Jeff Estes wishing you would subscribe to my blog and sponser my lunch breaks.

Explaining my lack of posts lately

2006-02-15T00:00:00.000-06:00

Long Overdue Post.

I haven't posted a real post in forever and I fell compelled to finally get back on track.

I haven't been bored but my time has been totally consumed by one thing or another. This week my entire family (minus me) came down with a viral flu like fever. My daughter was down for over six days, My son is now down and on his fifth day and my woman is on her fourth day. They all came down fast and hard. We're talking over 100 plus tempos for more than three days in most cases along with all the other flu like symptoms, fatigue/dizziness/vomit/dehydration, etc.

My son has a wicked cough that wakes him up and when he gets up he cries from the pain of the cough and lack of sleep (poor baby).

Hopefully tomorrow will be the last day that I have to take off from work to play Dr. Dad. I'm beat and exhausted also. I got my flu shot so whatever they got I've managed to avoid. Now I can just go to work and get everyone there sick (just kidding).

Beyond the pandemic at my house the only other reason I haven't been blogging is probably that I've become addicted to a MMORPG. It's called World of Warcraft. It's probably the most addictive game I've every played. The only other MMORPG's I've played were Ultima Online (long time ago) and Guild Wars. Now Ultima was rock solid cool since it was the best commercial launch of an MMORPG. They kind of launched the genre mainstream. Now I know some hard core geeks are gonna fling out their pocket protectors and want to throw down on how MUD's were way cooler and here first . I'm not going to get sucked into that argument but let me just say that WOW had all the graphics and eye candy you could want. I mean having to emote expressions in a text based mud like and are pretty lame when you compare it to what's available today.

If you've played and enjoyed MMORPG's then give WOW a try you'll be hooked. If you've never played a MMORPG but you've played other Pen and Paper classics like D&D then WOW is a great segue into the online Roleplaying world. Check it out.

I play on Kirin Tor as scoolio who is currently a 22nd Level Gnomish Mage. (Yes Richie I have your Best Buy Gift Cards)

So I guess you could blame my lack of posts lately on my WOW addiction. I have been using Xfire for awhile for my other IM Gaming needs and regrettably it tracks my online game time. It's almost bee like a second part time job. I'm disgusted by that but I can't explain how much fun I've had playing. It really brings me back to the old day of Pen and Paper roleplaying.

Quick question does your wife/girlfriend/roommate think that playing computer games online like WOW is weird/unproductive/complete waste of time/rude?

Nuff said I'm coming off as real hard core geek here and I don't want to upset my female readers who idealize me like Brad Pitt.

I really hope the family gets well enough to rejoin the living.

I hope to see/infect everyone back at work by the day after tomorrow.

I been saving a couple of links that I found interesting or amusing. Here they are below:

The death of the Telegram

For those Mac Fans that love to bash on Windows

A Picture Share! - Mark eats Fattening Foods

2006-02-02T09:55:00.000-06:00

Busted! Mark ate a pop tart

A Picture Share! - Cool Name Badge Logo

2006-01-24T15:01:00.000-06:00

A Picture Share! - Valet Parking at the Palms!

2006-01-19T21:04:00.000-06:00

The palms

A Picture Share! - Inked Season 2 Live on location

2006-01-19T21:00:00.000-06:00

Inked season 2

A Picture Share! - Expensive Desert crappy portion

2006-01-19T00:15:00.000-06:00

Dessert vegas style

A Picture Share! - Fish Taco's

2006-01-17T18:15:00.000-06:00

A Picture Share! - Baja Fresh rocks!

2006-01-17T18:08:00.000-06:00

Baja fresh

Jesus is now going to be fought in court?

2006-01-14T22:17:00.000-06:00

Couple of quick things.

Who the hell would sue over the concept that Jesus ever existed?
Those Italians have some nerve. I gauran-damn-tee that I would not want to be that Judge.

Click the Jesus link to follow the article.

On a lighter note. I'd like to extend a big FU to Sony.

They put a new encryption technology into play on The Cave, and it was hard to beat but I finally got it ripped, decrypted, and burned.

I really, really wish that DVD Decrypter and DVD Shrink we're being updated to get around newer encryption technologies. It sucks that I have to use different tools to defeat these kinds of issues now.

One mor thing...

I'm going to be in Vegas next week to do filming on with our new Online Training Content Publishers. Their offices are in Vegas and the shitty part is that I'm not a gambler or a drinker. I wish I was but I'm not.

I'd really rather go see the Grand Canyon or the Hoover Dam.

I'm out.

Posted by Jeff Estes wishing you would subscribe to my blog and sponser my lunch breaks.

Push Baby Push

2006-01-05T22:44:00.000-06:00

Quick shout out to my Blog readers. I need to obtain “Push It” from Salt N Pepa. My fallback online music store doesn’t have a lot of deep catalog music and apparently “Push It” isn’t available. I’d just steal it online but I’d feel better about it if someone just gave me a copy. Come on. Help a brother out.

There’s been a lot of coverage on the Tsunami from last year on TV. I’m glad to say that I now know more about Tsunami’s then I ever knew before last year. I haven’t really heard from my mother or brother since the one communication we had from them last year. I hope they are still doing well.

I’ve always felt kind of guilty about not knowing how to converse in Thai better I currently do. It’s just so fucking hard to learn Thai. It’s not easy like Spanish where you can just add an O to every other word like “Que Paso Blanco”. (Three words with two ending in O...The whole language is like that).

There are all kinds of learn this or learn that language CD’s in the stores but you can only find the big Major languages like German, French, Italian, Japanese, but you can’t find the third world stuff like Thai, Swahili, Scandanavian or whatever. I did scour the Internet (Google search) and found this company that offers Thai. Hit the link and see if you could learn Thai.

Bling, Bling, Ring, Ring.

If you’re not using ring tones you are so 19th century. If you’re a cheap-ass like me then there is no way in hell you’re going to pony up two or more bucks to buy a legit ringtone, so go the free cheap way and build your own ringtones here. Totally kick ass!

In case you missed the link above here it is in full:
http://mobile17.smashsworld.com/

One more link before I punch out for the night.

Say it ain’t so but is Google re-branding VLC for the public’s viewing pleasure?

The article is cool in so many ways. First what kind of geek crawls spiders on websites to find shit like this? I thought I had no life!

Posted by Jeff Estes

PS RSS feed my blog and sign up with your email address on the right side of this post.

A Picture Share! - Richard Brewer powned!

2006-01-04T20:25:00.000-06:00

Richie Brewer AGE 8

Happy New Year!

2006-01-02T00:02:00.000-06:00

It's a new year. Yep 2006.

I didn't eat beans, make promises to myself I wouldn't keep, or do any laundry.

I did read a whole lot this weekend. I finished reading Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban and I picked up and finished Michael Crichton's State of Fear.

If you haven't read any Michael Crichton's books you ought to do yourself a favor and pick one up. They are hard to put down and hell almost every one of his books have been made into movies. This book is about Eco-Terrorism and the myth/fact of global warming. It's a good read and it's even better if you’re into government conspiracy stuff.

I'm probably going to fuck up the date on everything I put to paper. You'd think that with all the hoopla that goes with the ushering in of a new year you'd be able to remember the fucking year but it never fails. It takes me almost an entire month to get it right.

I do have some good news. My old buddy Will Arnold is back in Arkansas for good. He dropped in on my the other day and mentioned that he's going to be living in Hot Springs with his pregnant wife. He's got a job in the medical industry selling [insert noun]. I'll let you guess what he's selling. Will I'm glad to have you back. I know you read this Blog so WELCOME BACK.

Links to check out if you’re bored.

I'm going to share of couple of links that I've come across lately that I find terribly entertaining.

Enjoy. I know that you'll be bored sitting around the house watching lots of old re-runs of Star Trek so here it goes:

Internet based word
processor.
Support Calls to Apple Tech
support. Most are lame but a couple hit the right spot.
We Taste
Horrible!
All Asians are
Pimps!

Webcams That dont suck!

47 is the new 42.

Posted by Jeff Estes doing something utterly uninteresting.

A Picture Share! - Pen Borrowed

2005-12-22T17:09:00.000-06:00

Borrowed marks pen

It's all about the codec

2005-12-21T20:28:00.000-06:00

I get asked a lot of DVD related questions so I've decided to post part of an email I got from a co-worker.

The question was kind of generic but it had to do with DVD ripping/burning/encoding.

Copy of the email below:

His Question:

_____________________________________________
From: [Unamed Co-worker]
Sent: Wednesday, December 21, 2005 12:43 PM
To: Jeff Estes
Subject: question

Jeff- I have looked everywhere for the answer to this question and I can't find a clear cut answer.I am wondering what the difference is between 120 Minutes of video on a regular 4.6GB dvdr as apposed to the actual 4.6GB of space available.Is Video burned to a DVDR different than burning raw data? Is it possible to fit more than 120 minutes on one dvd? I would really like to know…Here is my situation just for example…I have all three seasons of a tv show downloaded. (Its around 78 Episodes)Now, I have dual layer DVDs that I know I would be able to fit more data on and those are what 240 Minutes I would guess)Now each season is roughtly 4.6 GB of space, and of course each season is around 26 episodes at around 20 Minuts or so a piece.Is it possible to squeeze each season on a 4.6 DVD or better yet a 8.5 Dual layer? (What I really want to know is the difference between data vs. actually video/data.Also, these videos are Audio Video Interlaced format…Any info would be much appreicated..thanks![Co-worker hidden to protect his identity]

My Answer:

It's all about the codec's. Most commercial DVD's are created to completely consume the available space on a given DVD. The more space you have the less compression you have to use. The less compression involved then the less "loss" you have. You can fit as much information on a DVD as you'd like. It all comes down to the codec you decide to use when encoding your video feed.
(FYI you never want to recompress encoded video that's already been run through another codec)
For example if you have a raw uncompressed AVI file you can then turn it into (use a codec) whatever format you want QuickTime, Windows Movie, DIVA, FLAC, MPEG 2,4 etc.
It's generally a bad idea to take one compressed file and recompress it. Think about making photo copies of photocopied material. It gets worse as you continue to rip new copies.
The VOB and IFO files that you find on commercial produced DVD's are generally MPEG2 formatted movies. They are already compressed or Re-mastered. Programs like DVD Shrink and DVD Decrypter know this and just squeeze a little more space out of the MPEG2 video to get it to fit on smaller media.
I hope this answers your questions.
Jeffery Estes

Not all geeks are alike

2005-12-21T20:25:00.000-06:00

Want to know why network techs are network techs read this article.

http://wigleyandassociates.com/html/adsl_pt_3.html

Nuff said. I’m a geek but a different kind of geek.

Email from the Prez

2005-12-20T23:15:00.000-06:00

I got a funny email at work today. This particular email came from the President of our company and it's exactly these kinds of emails that force me to love this guy. I think he’s an awesome guy, sometimes his style can be very frustrating, but all in all he’s ok by me.

Copy of the email (minus any identifiable) information:

I am sorry! This is the last email that will ever be sent by [President of My Company]. You see, [First Name of President] has decided to take that last step off of the bridge. Due to early morning phone calls from customers that have received [Software Product] rollouts, followed by “chronic” and consistent problems, [First Name of President] decided it best, that he remove himself entirely from the picture, so to speak.

He has asked that all [My Company] employees remember him as a leader that was committed to providing the best possible customer service to [My Company] customers and that he did everything in his power to make [My Company] customers happy.

Unfortunately, the [Software Product] project became more than he could handle. For the purpose of federal government tracking, [First Name of President]’s identification number is #237847328493.
All monetary donations can be made to [Full Name of President] kids College Fund, “No education should ever be interrupted because of a good buffet!”

This has been [First Name of President]'s final message that will be in place until January 1st. Good Luck, God Bless, and shall the world become a better place because of technology!

Posted by Jeff Estes while ROTFL his Ass Off!

Marks Wife Can't Sing

2005-12-15T07:37:00.000-06:00

Shout out to Mark’s wife. Don’t quite your day job. You’re not a great singer.

BruceLee on TV!

2005-12-14T22:29:00.000-06:00

Did anyone watch the FX channel last Saturday? It was the Street Fighter Marathon. 8 hours of Kung Fu Movies. Rock On! My favorite part was watching Bruce Lee eat a barbequed cat in an Asian graveyard while he was on the run from the law.

I've just got to share a quick little story on Data Disasters. Last Friday at work a fellow co-workette accidentally deleted some very critical client data. Bad news was that this deletion occurred across a network share drive. If you've never had the misfortune of a grade a fuck up deletion across a network share then this story is for you. I think that we are all familiar with the Windows recycle bin. Reminder when you use raid for striping it only protects your data from hardware failure not user error and accidental file deletion.

Virus Kung FU story.

A very large client of ours got infected with the Smitfraud Trojan horse. It’s a very difficult Trojan to fight. I tried to fight it remotely but it was too hard to do so we had the client pull his hard drive and ship it out to us. We mounted the drive remotely and we were able to remove it but it involved manually registry deletions, the unregistering of dll’s and then deleting the spawned processes at boot up before they could re-register to core dll files. Very tedious but during the course of the Smitfraud fight we encountered a pretty cool tool called killbox. It’s designed to pound on and delete specified binary applications or processes on reboot before they can set their teeth into your system.

The client we fixed this problem asked how he could avoid it in the future and my advice/mantra is:

To only use software from reputable vendors that you trust.

You get what you pay for with most software packages. (Most of the software on his system you never heard of before or you’d never see in Compusa)

If you saw it in a pop up or in an unsolicited email (SPAM) don’t buy it, don’t click on the link to just “check it out”.

Research the product before you think about buying it.

If latest version of windows can do what you want then just use windows to do it. You’d be surprised how many really good apps exist in windows for free.

Footnote on file/folder deletion:

The deleted folder at work was recovered using a program called File Scavenger. This program was cheap to buy and it will recovered deleted date across network shares and it will install and run from a floppy disk if needed so you can avoid the danger of overwriting the data you just deleted.

Client Job Network Card Install.

I did another small http://www.jeffestes.com/ job the other night. A client’s daughter wanted high speed internet and the install kit with the modem and router arrived but she lacked an Ethernet port for the router. I advised to go out and pick up a network card and I dropped by the house and slapped the whole thing together in less than 20 minutes including the router setup.

Now she is cruising the internet at high speed and hidden away nicely behind her encrypted router. Now if I could just get her to upgrade away from her Windows 98 box.

That’s it I’m out.

A Picture Share! - Death by Sushi!

2005-12-12T12:38:00.000-06:00

Sushi for lunch

A note on my disappearance

2005-12-07T22:53:00.000-06:00

Note that this is a post I wrote like on Monday but my lazy ass didn’t post until today.

I wanted to throw a quick shout out on a couple different things real quick.

First I want to apologize to my friends that I bailed out on for last Saturday's Fight night. I had a personal crisis that needed handling and it took all weekend to get partially handled. I will not go into any details. It's probably going to stay right down there with my Carney story.

Second I want to let my programmer buddy blank wick von programmer know that I totally understand his feeling to possible seek a horizontal promotion. If you go I'll miss you but I will totally understand your leaving.

I got a copy of Norton System Works 2006 to try out for work and I'm looking forward to another software test drive but god I hate Norton's stuff. I'm already running two firewalls, three if you count the lame ass Windows SP2 firewall.

System Works is going to drive a huge-ass digital stake into my system memory but somebody's got to take one for the team and test this stuff out. I'll probably post a comprehensive review on the software firewalls I've tested in the last couple months. I'm still a huge A-1 fan of hardware firewall solutions but sometime's a soft firewall is a good idea in different usage scenarios.

I like just got paid a couple of days ago and I'm already broke. I guess I shouldn't be surprised since I'm always broke but it's kind of depressing when you’re so close to Christmas and the kids want really expensive stuff like the Xbox 360. I'll figure something out or I'll rob a bank or something. I wish I was like an Uber hacker and I could leech money from large federal banks. Instead I'll probably have to rip off some trailer truck bank in a country parking lot. Knowing my luck I'll get pinched for like a dime and end up serving time with bunkmate who's into Mexican looking Asian men.
To take this prison story further along I would probably be screwed since I'm not ethnically pure enough to join up with a hard core prison gang. I wonder if there are any prison gangs for half-breeds.

Enough for now. Catch me if you can on skype as jefferyestes

Search Engine Beta Labs

2005-12-02T20:27:00.000-06:00

Search Engine Beta Labs

http://www.labs.google.com

http://www.sandbox.msn.com

http://www.research.yahoo.com

I found a pimptastic project called Google Ride Finder you can find it at http://www.labs.google.com/ridefinder. It goes way beyond pimp it's actually useful if you live in a city that has a cab company with GPS enabled cabs and they participate in the project. I probably spent a half hour following a cab around San Francisco (I have no life its official).

Not only is the ridefinder pimptastic I can't get over how cool a hybrid Google map is. They Hybrid maps overlay satellite data on top of the street cartography. When you zoom in close enough you even get directional arrows to indicate the traffic flow direction. Pimptastic!

Shitty part to Google Maps is that it doesn't play well with Opera. :(

My buddy Richie turned me onto Microsoft’s public beta for their OneCareLive. You can find it here.

If you haven't heard about the new windows live media push, then I don't know what rock you've been living under. Read the official press here at ideas.live.com. The site was down at the time I posted this but it should be up by now. Check out this awesome error message I got though.

[I can't upload the image right now i'll try later]

That's it for me. I'm punching out. O yea fuck Myspace they deleted my account. WTF!

A Picture Share! - Commutes suck

2005-11-16T08:06:00.000-06:00

3 MPH Commute

A Picture Share! - All your tuna belongs to us

2005-11-15T15:53:00.000-06:00

Stole Marks food

A Picture Share! - Josh gets his badge

2005-11-11T11:50:00.000-06:00

Josh is a detective

Starbucks Coffee Carabiner Cup - Xmas Gift!

2005-11-09T08:45:00.000-06:00

Christmas gift

Bitching Bike Skills

2005-11-08T03:36:00.000-06:00

Mad Bike Skills here.

I give this guy mad props. You must be seriously bored to get this good on a bicycle. I used to think I was cool doing wheelies.

Opinions Change

2005-11-08T03:35:00.000-06:00

Opinions do change if you're receptive.

I've been reviewing Norton Internet Security Suite 2006 (which is way too long of a name so I'm now going to refer to it as NIS2006). I used to swear everyone I could convince to run away from this product but I'm going to now reverse my opinion and START recommending it more often.

Now I must qualify this statement: First of all I think that ALL Security Suites suck since they are bloated, memory sucking, bandwidth hogs, but they do serve a purpose for some people. They [security suites] are very broad stroke in their implementation of "Security" and they absolutely dominate your running user and system level processes. You could entirely avoid the majority of the issues that you are being "protected" against by simply being a smart and security-minded computer user. For your average technical user you can avoid almost every major issue that NIS2006 is trying to protect you from if you’re inclined to learn and adapt your computer usage a little, for your average user (read not into security and smart computing) NIS2006 is not a bad choice.

I'm re-reviewing NIS2006 since the previous iterations of NIS* have been know to "break" lots of custom applications including my employers custom web-based applications and it also interferes with Windows File and Printer sharing. These two things tend to generate massive amounts of support calls from our clients. In light of the recent rise and proliferation of script kiddies, Malicious Worm writers, bot nets, etc., more and more of our clients are turning to Security Suites to protect their machines and their networks since they can't afford to hire and retain quality IT staff. This is why I’m re-reviewing this product. I need to be able to stare reality in the face and actually recommend a software package to clients that lack IT knowledge and staff.

I'm pleased to say that the current iteration of NIS2006 with standard install choices and no custom tweaking no longer destroys our Flagship Java based application. In light of that fact and the fact that we really can't teach the world to sing, I'm going to start recommending NIS2006.

Things I still hate about NIS* and other Security Suite products:

It still sucks massive (88,296 K) memory with just four processes

It's still expensive. $70 bucks for a one year subscription or $99 for a two year subscription.

It's still a Symantec Product. Don’t' misread me Symantec's Enterprise products and service are great but your average home user can't afford to pay extra money to call a tech support staff member about a $99 product. It's not right!

Things I like about NIS2006

The log viewer is rock solid, easy on the eyes, easy to export, print, and save/clear.

The spam filter is Bayesian based and works really well.

The install made good choices without forcing me to tweak it to "work" for what I needed.

It includes an Intrusion Detection component. "Your average user would never even consider the usefulness of IDS".

If it’s locked down with a username password you can’t easily kill the suite so it’s a decent way of keeping your employees from mucking up the system.

It has a great port 80 filter for IE.

That's enough about NIS*

I took a day off from work. I don't do that enough. Don't get me wrong I've taken time off for different reasons (mainly errands), but tomorrow is going to be a 90% relax PT day. I have a 2PM appointment with a termite inspector (cross your fingers) but other than that I plan on doing a lot of nothing (outside of making a trip to the DMV).

I'm definitely going to sleep in after getting the kids off to school, and then I'm probably going to get a little CS play in.

Work Stuff.

My current "project" is coming along but it's coming along more slowly then I wanted it to. I still don't spend as much time on my "project" as I'd like to but so many things come up during the day that require my department's attention. Mark and I call this "fire-fighting". We still do way more firefighting then I'd like to do. We also spend an inordinate amount of time dealing with Emails. This probably can't be avoided but you'd be surprised how much work actually consists of pushing digital paper around. (What did people do before email)?

I also attended a short meeting (less than an hour) and got up to speed on a Development project for our web based application. I missed so many of these meetings that I had a lot of catching up to do and I'm real impressed with the work our programmers have done.

It's kind of weird being involved in software development. For a long time you’ve read about the problems with software developers and almost everyone one the public consumer side of the fence says the same thing: "Do more QA and testing", "Stop putting out buggy code and flawed software", "Spend more time on the UI and make it easy to use", etc. Now I'm seeing things from the other side of the fence. Developers slave away in their cubes and keep getting sent back to the drawing board and they want to push what they have out to the public if it works and then deal with rewrites and revisions and enhancements after they get more feedback from the users. I'm still not sure what's best. I think we're approaching it fairly reasonable by doing UI strategic thinking (My department’s job) and quality QA (another person's job). As a young software company we're still learning how to do this right. I think we're approaching it correctly and faithfully on our customers behalf we all just wished that it went faster and that we had more help.

Speaking of help

Off shoring is a dirty work you hear about in IT all the time and my employer is considering it. Whether or not we offshore it doesn't directly affect my position (I'm not a programmer), but it sure can stir the pot. I don't think anyone off shores for quality, but I do believe that it's a fine line between quality and speed to market that leads management to off shoring. I hope it all works out in the end.

I’m out it’s time for bed. (0330 hours).

Posted by Jeff while waiting on his body to get tired.

A Picture Share! - Victoria as a Witch on Halloween

2005-10-31T20:58:00.000-06:00

My little witch

Plasti(what the fuck)nation

2005-10-20T23:42:00.000-05:00

Crazy Ass Shit:

Wow! I created a whole new folder to bookmark this one. Plastination. I was watching the history channel (My default channel most of the time) and they did a story on Taxidermy (absolutely fascinating) and Plastination. I have to say that I'd never heard of Plastination and I'm absolutely floored by it. First of all it's scientifically amazing that this is even possible, and then it’s hard to imagine how someone could think to try this on a human being. I have to admit it’s morbid but utterly stunning to see. Hit the link and check it out.

Shit I get asked all the time:

I'll bring it up again. I absolutely love www.allofmp3.com I’ve now downloaded close to 30.00 dollars worth of music. Since I've been asked a lot about www.allofmp3.com I'll go over the process.

1) Go to the site and sign up for an account.

2) Download and use their allofmp3 explorer tool. It will default install to C:\Program Files\MediaServices\Allofmp3

3) Near the end of the install the "Startup Wizard" will come up. Select your language (No Asian languages, damn)!

4) You will be asked to set your default audio folder. C:\My Music is the wizards default choice. You will also be asked to select a file name mask. If you've worked with LAME before you'll recognize the layout. If you don't know what you're doing just leave it alone. By default it's going to be %G\%A(%Y)\%T - %S. Yea whatever that means right.

5) Please note the checkbox to Enable Catalog which is not set. I recommend hitting that checkbox since it will reduce the total amount of time a search takes after the initial (long) catalog update.

6) If you followed my directions you already created an account from step 1. If you didn't create an account you can hit the blue hypertext link to setup an account. Now just key in your username and password for allofmp3 in the boxes.

7) Now wait for the Allofmp3 Explorer to Connect to download.allofmp3.com and update its catalog and exchange a security key with the site. Then your username and password should be checked and the initial catalog update should start after you hit the OK button to allow the full update to get started. The download can take up to five minutes.

8) After you've downloaded the tool you can charge up your account with a credit card, Paypal (support comes and goes for Paypal), WebMoney, or Yandex.Money. (You can only charge up 10.00 dollars at a time.

9) Now search for and mark songs for download and then enjoy!

Personal stuff:

The family is still under the weather which is pretty taxing on me but hey it's life. Victoria has some girls staying over tonight for a slumber party so their goes my sanity. My father in law is driving one step at a time toward becoming a psychopath. I swear I'm going to kill him, bitch slap him to death and then eat him if I have to. I'll do anything to shut his ass up. I'm tired and my day at work was totally shot by one question/fire after another. (Did I mention the five hour demonstration I gave)!

Nuff said I'm out.

Posted by Jeff Estes while watching a show on Cannibalism

Broadcast Flag it sucks!

2005-10-19T00:37:00.000-05:00

Broadcast Flag it sucks! Please hit the link and email the government.

This post is so long I took out all the bitching I was doing in favor of self directed learning. If you want to know why the Broadcast Flag initiative sucks then Google it. But please hit the link about it at the EFF and send the email.

Today is Victoria's last day in single digits. She turns 10 tomorrow (today this is a late post).

Wow Time flies after you have fun making kids. :)

Recap of the last week

I had a super packed weekend and I really meant to Blog about it earlier but I just couldn't get to it until now. It all started last Friday when a friend whom some of you know as Bob the "knife" brought over an iMac that he needed to recover data from. Let me preface what I’m about to say since I previously blogged that I’d do no more “freebie” work but I'm not the kind of guy to turn down a chance to gut an iMac and then attempt to recover data off a hard drive. To date I've been able to successfully recover data off of "dead" drives at least five times. Most of the time it's as simple as mounting the "dead" drive to a live Windows or Linux box, or worst case scenario I use the copy of Spinrite that work bought for me. To date I'm like 5 for 5 but I've never tried to recover data from a Mac.

I've got a picture of the gutted Mac on my cell phone and I'll upload it to the Blog when I get my Sprint Vision plan fixed. All of the sudden I can't photo Blog anymore. I ended up being unable to natively mount an HFS formatted drive and since my Linux Box wasn't available we mounted the Mac drive in an external enclosure and used some software from Mediafour called MacDrive. It emulates the ability to mount/read and write to and from Mac formatted drives and Mt. Rainer enabled Optical storage devices. It worked like a charm but it ran real slow (emulation sucks cycles). To move 7 and half gigs of data took over three hours! A total success! Whoopee.

On the personal side of things we have experienced some additional car problems with Heidi’s car and its back in the shop again. Go figure. It's still cheaper to keep fixing it rather than picking up a new/used car payment but it's damn inconvenient. Having one car goes beyond suckage.

I will now further clarify the “beyond suckage” statement. Mason's special needs school restricts our drop off time to a ten minute window. We can only drop him off between 8:20 AM and 8:30 AM. I like to be at work before 8AM if I can but under the one car system I can barely make it to work before 9AM. This puts me behind on emails and voicemails. Since most of my appointment calls, conference calls, and meetings start around 9:30 or 10:00 AM this really dings my day.

Now for work related suckage:

Mark is out of town all this week so I'm like twice as busy at work (firefighting mainly). I’m still working on this special project stuff, when I’m not firefighting. It’s going well but it’s not going well fast enough. I put up sign on my door at work that tells people to go ask two other people first before they come ask me. Sounds harsh but it’s kind of like the military chain of command thing. Don’t come ask a Captain or Lt. until you’ve run it by the Sarge and Master Sarg. I don’t know if the whole military chain of command thing makes sense or not but fuck it. I’m tired.

More personal stuff:
I've also been working on cracking the Napster DRM. I've found a couple of hopefuls but most of them work by re-encoding the stream as it plays (small sound degradation). Right now I'm using Tunebite and Winamp with the lame encoder. I'll let you know which one I like the most when I nail the process down. I've also been looking real hard at the yahoo music plan which is like a third the cost of Napster but I'm pretty happy with Napster since they kind of pioneered the whole P2P piracy thing and I hate Itunes. (Yea I said it I alone in the world think that Itunes and their white fucking Ipod sucks serious ass). If you’re one of those Apple Nazi’s then crawl your ass back into your Tucker automobile, drive your ass home and pop in a Betamax Video and then play some 45’s and LP’s while try to tune in BBC on your vacuum tube stereo.

You might ask why I hate IPODS and I’d have to say that I really just hate Itunes and the Apple business model. They are so smug about how their OS is invulnerable (not true), and Immune the blue screen of death stuff. The reason their shit works so well is that Apple lives in a very closed community. Apple could give a damn about interoperability. They’re like the movie Field of Dreams. “If you build it they will come”. Don’t get me wrong the Apple stuff is Beautiful but go to best buy and browse their Macintosh Game section. If you really want to go hardcore anti-windows go Linux or pure UNIX then come back and talk shit.

I am so fucking sorry this post is so fucking long. I’ve been away from my Blog for too long and I have way to much stuff to get out of my head.

Posted by Jeff Estes while recovering from his long absence to the BLOG.

I love the ISO body!

2005-10-11T18:48:00.000-05:00

Hit this link and check out the ISO Proposal for resolving customer issues.

I think it's great that a standards body exists for the purpose of establishing standards.

This ISO that is up for review gives companies a "standard" to follow for recognizing and resolving customer issues. I love this kind of shit.

We had a bad experience at work today with a vendor who's President basically refused to help us fix a problem with his product. It's freaking amazing that a companies president would say sorry, you're money is good but our service isn't. I hate vendor lock in. If we hadn't already forked over SERIOUS dough for software maintainence we'd leave in a heartbeat. Greedy non customer centric bastards!

So much has happened in such a short time I'm not sure what to blog about.

We lost a new travel technician who didn't even make it through a straight week. I've got to respect his decision since he took the job and made the big move to Arkansas then realized that he wasn't a good fit from the get-go. Going to miss you Mike and I wish you good luck!

I have a training class to give a client tomorrow (on very short notice mind you). It's going to eat a considerable amount of my day but hey I get paid to work so work it will be. I attended a demo today from a Macromedia presenter using Breeze. Absolutely amazing demo software but damned it's expensive. They were wanting a couple hundred to 750 bucks a month to let you use their software. I want to say it was worth it but it's hard to swallow that kind of price per month for just doing presentations and remote training.

On the flipside I downloaded and have been using Macromedia's Captivate software which I have to say is really freaking cool. It's so going to make my job easier.

We have started a new program at work where we are FINALLY calling our clients and converting their systems over to a more secure download process. We are using a solution built around PSCP. PSCP is from the same genius that brought SSH to the masses with PuTTY.

I have so much more I want to blog about but my IM is blowing up so I'm going to bounce.

Posted by Jeff Estes while catching up on my KFI guy podcast.

Read the privacy policy It's bullshit!

2005-10-08T00:30:00.000-05:00

I take it upon myself to already read EULAS and Privacy Statement Disclosures/Terms of Use. I do this for a couple of different reasons:

They are sometimes scary in their scope.
You might learn something you didn't know.
You might decide to become an attorney to learn how to write bullshit.
You might decide to stop signing up for website with your real email address.
You might laugh your ass off!

I bring this up because I was reading a blog that from John C Dvorak and he has the best Privacy Statement I've ever read.

I'll post the link here, and I'll copy and paste it below:

Use of this website/blog is offered to you on your acceptance of these erms of Use, our Privacy Policy and other notices posted on this website.

Your use of this website or of any content presented in any and all areas of the website indicates your acknowledgment and agreement to these Terms of Use, our Privacy Policy and other notices posted on this website. If you do not agree to be bound by and comply with all of the foregoing, you may not access the website. Dvorak.org has the right, at its sole discretion, to modify, add or remove any terms or conditions of these Terms of Use without notice or liability to you. Any changes to these Terms of Use shall be effectively immediately following the posting of such changes on this website.

This website is for informational purposes only and is not intended to provide specific commercial, financial, investment, accounting, tax, or legal advice. It is provided to you solely for your own personal, non-commercial use. You may link to and refer to this website freely. You must, when linking to this website, thrust your fist into the air and yell "death to tyrants." This site is not responsible for any deaths to tyrants or any other negative activity except for the yelling which we do not condone except in this context.
This website does not guarantee the accuracy of any information and users cannot sue us for stupidly believing everything they read. Most of what is on this website is bullshit and should be treated as such.

Moreover, use of the word "bullshit" shall not constitute an insult to any users of this website or any person living or dead except Hitler. Accordingly, we do not guarantee the accuracy, timeliness, reliability or completeness of any of the information contained on, downloaded or accessed from this website.

The performance of this website and all information contained on, downloaded or accessed from this website are provided to you on an "as is" basis, without warranties of any kind whatsoever, including any implied warranties or warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose or non-infringement of the rights of third parties. If something weird happens to your computer because you accessed this website, you cannot blame us in any way. We will tolerate one nasty note and nothing more. You are allowed other actions, legal or otherwise, only if you stand in the middle of the Central Park Zoo (NYC) naked and scream the words: "I am not insane. I can hear these animals begging to be released." You must do this for one hour or until your arrest.

We reserve the right to modify, disable access to or discontinue, temporarily or permanently, any part or all of this website or any information contained thereon without liability or notice to you. We tell you this for no particular reason since you cannot do much about it anyway.

As a visitor to our website, you acknowledge and agree that any reliance on or use by you of any information available on this website shall be entirely at your own risk. In no event shall Dvorak.org nor any of its data providers, friends, allies or hangers-on be liable for any direct, indirect, consequential or exemplary damages arising from the use or the performance of this website. And don't let the door hit you in the ass on your way out!

We do not do pop-ups and do not give a rat's ass about your personal information. This may change, as noted above

Confidentiality and Transmissions over the Internet

The transmission of data or information (including communications by e-mail) over the Internet or other publicly accessible networks is not secure, and is subject to possible loss, interception or alteration while in transit. Accordingly, we do not assume any liability for any damage you may experience or costs you may incur as a result of any transmissions over the Internet or other publicly accessible networks, such as transmissions involving the exchange of e-mail with us (including those which may contain your personal information). We don't care. We make no efforts to safeguard the privacy of the information you provide us, period. All submissions to this website via email or otherwise becomes our property to make life easier, on us. You accept this and live with it. It's too much work otherwise. In no event will the information you provide to us be deemed to be confidential, create any fiduciary obligations to you on our part, or result in any liability to you on our part in the event that such information is inadvertently released by us or accessed by third parties without our consent.

User Conduct and Obligations

You agree to follow all applicable laws and regulations when using this website and further agree that you will not transmit junk mail, chain letters, or other unsolicited bulk e-mail or duplicative messages to any email address listed on this site without agreeing to pay to John C. Dvorak the sum of US$10,000 per item.

By uploading, posting or otherwise transmitting through or to our website any content, you grant to us, our successors and assigns, a non-exclusive, world-wide, royalty free, perpetual, non-revocable licence to use or distribute such content in any manner otherwise than as stated in our Privacy Policy.

Indemification by User

You agree to indemnify, defend and hold us and our friends, spouses, children, and agents harmless from any loss, liability, claim, demand, damage, or expense (including any legal fees) asserted by any third party relating in any way to your use of this website or breach of these Terms of Use. We reserve the right to assume the exclusive defense and control of any matter subject to indemnification by you, which shall not excuse your indemnity obligations. In other words, find someone else to sue.

Third Parties and Links

No matter how much we say we love these sites, consider it Bullshit (see reference to "Bullshit" above). As far as you are concerned links or pointers to other websites and references to products and services offered by third parties are provided to you for convenience only and do not constitute an endorsement or approval by us of (i) the organizations that operate such websites; (ii) the content, privacy policies or other terms of use on such websites; or (iii) such third party products and services. As we have no control or responsibility over websites or content maintained by other organizations, or for products and services offered by third parties, we do not assume any liability for your use of any of the foregoing, which use you acknowledge and agree shall be at your own risk.

Proprietary Rights

Our policy is to comply with all intellectual property laws and to act quickly upon receiving any notice of claimed infringement. If you believe that your work has been reproduced on this website in a manner that constitutes copyright infringement, please let us know immediately by sending email to

webalert@dvorak.org.

General

If any provision of these Terms of Use is held invalid or unenforceable in any respect by any court having competent jurisdiction, such provision shall be enforced to the maximum extent permitted by law, and the remaining provisions of these Terms of Use shall continue in full force and effect. No waiver of any provision of these Terms of Use shall be deemed a further or continuing waiver of such provision or any other provision of these Terms of Use.

These Terms of Use shall be governed by and construed in accordance with the laws of the State of California and the laws of the United States of America. The parties consent to the exclusive jurisdiction at a place to be determined by Dvorak.org at the last minute.

Posted by Jeff Estes while catching up on my podcasts.

Skype In is active now

2005-10-04T23:52:00.000-05:00

I've been using skype for awhile now and I finally bit the bullet and dropped in some moolah for a skypin number and voicemail.

My new skypein number is 501 588 1969 [like the rob zombie song 1960 9 ya]

So skypeme and check it out.

Busy night with kids and stuff tonight. Mason is still awake and I wish he wasn't I just spent a bit of time on www.craigslist.com checking out rentals in little rock. I haven't looked at craigslist in such a long time I'm amazed at how big the site has gotten. Check it out. It's pretty tight.

Posted by Jeff Estes checking out his new Skype Number.

Another Great Sourceforge Application

2005-10-04T00:09:00.000-05:00

Wow Sourceforge consistantly amazes me. I have rarely been disapointed by Sourceforge when looking for a new free app to do something.

Need to make password protected self extracing zip files. Try 7-zip
Need a windows podcast client and don't want to use Itunes? Try IpodderLemon
Need a bit torrent client use Azureus?
Want a a disk usage statistics viewer? Try WinDirStat!

This windirstat is amazing. Download it and run it and be amazed. Lots of cool features buried in the application so have fun. Regrettably there is no un-installer but I don't think you'll take it out if you try it.

I need to take a Vacation. I'm out.

Posted by Jeff Estes while finally "seeing" how much space is used up by Podcasts!

The Return of Will Arnold

2005-10-02T13:01:00.000-05:00

He's alive. Will is alive. I heard from Will just a couple of minutes ago. He's working for AC Nielsen. They are one of those large Conglomerate companies that mine and analyse data for consumer purchase/entertainment trends.

Will is doing just fine and living it large in Atlanta GA. His girl is still "into" him so he's still a happy country boy trying to survive in the big city.

If you want to reach Will comment on this blog and he'll post back with his personal email address. Will if you're ok with me posting your email addy's I'll post them here for you.

It was great to hear from Will and I hope he stays in touch.

BTW I'm going to be posting some links or walk-through's on "backing" up *cough* your personal DVD collections with tools like DVD Decrypter and DVD Shrink. I might post them on my other blog of Stuff I Get Asked All The Time.

Posted by Jeff Estes while watching the Sci-Fi channel.

Blue Flames

2005-09-30T11:25:00.000-05:00

I shouldn't have to say this but we all know about the blue flame don't we?

Hit the link and get the scoop.

We all did it. It's okay it's not like it makes you go blind or makes your palms hairy.

Posted by Jeff Estes checking out Brad's photo pics.

Mark is a dumbass!

2005-09-28T16:00:00.000-05:00

Mark brought a case of Diet Mt. Dew to work but he still wastes money in the vending machine. This is my omage to Mark's stupid moment caught on cameraphone!

Photoblogged by Jeff Estes on his Sprint PCS camera phone.

Email and RSS Feeds

2005-09-28T00:13:00.000-05:00

Blogger enables RSS feeds if your interested.

I just re-added my bloglet email subscription for this blog.

Please look at my profile on the right side of this page and give up your email address to subscribe to my RSS feed. If you have no idea what RSS is then sign up anyway and see how it works. Basically you can be lazy and stop checking my blog and instead start getting my posts via email. Hence the need for your email address.

Don't be a loser. Just sign up. BTW let me know if it even works for you or not. I'm still learning how all this works.

I also enabled some anti comment spam features. So if you try to comment on my blog you'll have to pass some basic visual Turing type tests to make sure your a human being and not some web crawling pathetic low life comment href referral engine. I got some pathetic comment spam and it just pisses me off to no end.

Nuff said I'm done.

Posted by Jeff Estes while comparing his old blog template to his new blog template.

So much to blog so little time.

2005-09-27T23:48:00.000-05:00

So much to blog so little time.

So much has happened in such a short period of time and so much of it was so bloggable.
It's kind of weird how blogging has effected me. I know I pour a lot of energy/thought into this blog and it's really just like those journals I kept as a pre-pubescent teen. Except this one can be read online by anyone with a keyboard, mouse, and modem. That should kind of creep me out since journals used to be thought of as so private and now blogs are so public. I don't know if what drives me is some self-centered ego mana fuel or if I do this just to keep from going postal. It's probably a little of both and some weird third eye kind of thing.

Whatever. Now onto my "I'm so going to blog these moments" that I haven't been able to blog about in LIFO order. (Last In First Out you Morons)!

Ever expanding Job descriptions

Let me preface by saying I'm not bitching, I'm blogging. My job description has changed/expanded/been clarified. It's really all about perspective but I've just been pulled off my existing workflow and violently sucked into a new thing. This new thing is tied to a new "strategic alliance" my company has formed. Now this new strategic alliance will allow my company to move/create a new online presence that is very Flashy and professional looking. This company is also going to host a server for all this content and my job is going to involve feeding this new Content Management System. So in some aspects my job hasn't changed that much. It's just shifting from more personal interaction to more virtual interaction. I'm kind of psyched/scared by this. I'm so good at what I do which is talking to people and seeing the big picture and then making good news better and bad news more palatable. Some call of the "gift of gab" and some call it just plain "bullshit". I don't care what you call it I call it a paycheck. My company has cancelled the once every other month training class that we used to hold here in our hometown for out of town clients. The decision is to take all that effort and energy and pour it into this "virtual training/information nexus". I think that his is a very good and progressive stance to take. I'm glad the higher ups at my employer have chosen this route and chosen me to perform these duties.

Family/Personal problems

My family has two very old cars (klunkers). One of those cars is currently in the shop. We still don't know exactly what's wrong all we know is that it started spitting out the Green radiator-ish fluid and refused to restart. So we towed it to a bucktoothed mechanic that chews and he's going to let us know whats wrong and how much its going to "hurt" the pocketbook. I hope it's less than 300 bucks. I also hope it comes quickly. Having one car with two jobs, two adults, two kids, daycare, and college really hurts the shuffling of people and places.

Friends with SERIOUS Issues

I have a friend whom I will not name who is experiencing some difficulties. This friend is married to a woman that he loves dearly but he's in a tough position. Know I only know one half of the story but based on the conversations I've had and the observations I've been able to make and my own personal experience with my First wife I can definitely feel his pain. He actually asked me to post a story of my take on how to maintain a sucessfull marriage but I'll have to put some thought into that one and make it a "special" post. I want to let my friend know that what's he is going through is regrettably not unique and the author of this blog totally understands his situation. If his significant other reads this blog then please reach to me or my "wife" and let just talk if you feel like it. A relationship is precious, a marriage is priceless. Please work twice as hard to make your bond stronger and more meaningful for yourself and your spouse. You'll be better off in the long run. You both love each other but you're both young. You might not agree with that but look back just five years and compare and contrast then vs. now. The same five year growth occurs between now and thirty. Trust me! (I promise I'll blog more about my secrets for maintaining a happy domestic life vs a hectic work life.

Kids

Besides driving me crazy and loving them to death my kids are doing well. Victoria is blossoming into a beutiful and precocious little woman. Mason is progressing well with his Autism problems. It's still incredibly demanding on the entire family (Victoria included).

Gaming

Day of Defeat was released today on Steam but alack the 20.00 dollar key I bought on Ebay a while back for CS:Source didn't include a right to play DoD so I guess I might pony up some greenbacks to try it out. We'll see.

Enough for me. I'm out!

Posted by Jeff Estes while staring an enormous pile of laundry which I know I'm not going to do!

Conference Calls - Hate them!

2005-09-21T11:32:00.000-05:00

I've dropped everything I was doing that was productive and now I'm waiting on a conference call to start which was supposed to start at 11:00 AM It's now 11:34 AM and no one has contacted me.

Hopefully this will be a productive conference call but we'll see. Most of the time when I'm involved on a conference call I'm the tech guy who has his five minutes of initial spiel then I'm relegated to yes or no type answers to various questions.

So my typical hour long conference call starts and ends with me contributing a total of five minutes of info/knowledge, and the a half dozen or so yes we can do that or no we can't do that.

I guess I'm a value-add conference call attendee. Neat!

On the flipside my last blog posting was made last night but didn't hit the "wire" until just now. I don't know why all I know is that I kept getting some unintelligible error every time I tried to post it.

Posted by Jeff Estes while waiting on a conference call to start

My Next Car

2005-09-18T01:32:00.000-05:00

Okay, I've got to get realistic about my car choices and look at cars that are more in my price range. I think I found the car.

Check it out here. Even after my customizations it still came in at under 16 and a half K. That keeps the price below 330.00 according to the Scion Price Calculator. But my credit score sucks hard ass so I'll probably stay in the hooptie forever.

My boy RiTchie called me out on his blog so this is my Blogback. And yea Richie I am going to fill up the Internet with my posts.

Buddies Blog

Posted by Jeff Estes after reading my buddies blog.

DVD Questions Answered

2005-09-17T21:18:00.000-05:00

Wow!

I've found this faq before but I actually went back and re-read parts of it for clarification.

Thank you Jim. Read it here.

I've been brushing up on my DVD backup skills so I thought I'd troll the forums and IRC rooms and look for more tricks. I'm still pretty bugged about the death of DVD Decrypter and now I'm looking for a future tool to use.

I'm looking pretty hard at this company in Antigua. Check them out and you might recognize the clonedvd software. Appearantly they've moved to Antiqua which lacks the copywrite oversight of the European union and the American court system.

I really dig their AnyDVD driver concept. It will strip out the Copywrite protection at the driver level. Sweet! You still need to use your own encoder but everyone already has an encoder in most cases like Nero or Roxio.

That's it just thought I'd share. If you're feeling adventerous I still find Doom9 to be the best website on planet earth for you self-studying DVD enthusiasts.

Posted by Jeff Estes from the patio inhaling extreme amounts of ultra light nicottine.

Template Changes

2005-09-05T00:08:00.000-05:00

It's official.

I seriously don't know HTML well enought to wipe my own ass.

I just re-loaded my Blog Template with something new to spice it up a little. I've totally given up on spell checking my previous posts.

I leave for Vegas in a couple days and I bought a new pair of shoes. (streaming thoughts from head directly into blogger).

I'm tired I want to bone my wife and the kids are still awake and screaming. I'm going to lose my mind again for the Nth time!

Tomorrow I plan to go to blockbusters and see if I can rent a whole season on DVD of some television show that I think I'd love to watch but never got around to catching in it's entirety.

I'm thinking one of the following:
Alias Season 1
Battlestar Galactica
Lost Season 1
Sopranoes Season 1

Since the kids are out of school and kicking field goals in my ass (thanks Aaron!) I'll probably need to get something that isn't totally wrong for the kids to overhear like the Sopranoes.

That's it get out of my head you evil thoughts!

BTW the custom shit I loaded onto my blog will get back on there eventually.

Posted by Jeff Estes while contemplating taking taking a vacation.

DMCA

2005-08-28T00:26:00.000-05:00

Tried to relieve some stress playing CS but alas I just got powned.

So now I'm dong "other" stuff. Whilst doing "other" stuff I was reading up on a thing and I thought I'd post a piece below:

US Copyright Law In the United States, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, section 1201(f) permits a person to "circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a particular portion of that program for the sole purpose of identifying and analyzing those elements of the program that are necessary to achieve interoperability of an independently created computer program with other programs", and for that person to "develop and employ technological means to circumvent a technological measure" for the purpose of "enabling interoperability of an independently created computer program with other programs". The information and means developed for these purposes may be made available to others if it is provided "solely for the purpose of enabling interoperability of an independently created computer program with other programs".

Anyway sounds scary but am I worried? Kind of.

I'm going to try to sleep now so good night.

Posted by Jeff Estes while doing something illegal.

What the fuck did you just ask me?

2005-08-17T00:59:00.000-05:00

I blog therefore I am.

It's amazing how blogging kind of clears the mind and prepares the way for whatever the hell you really feel like doing after a mental cleansing.
I've spent the last hour now replicating my music store backup (thank god for backups) to my local root directory.

Whilst I was restoring backups I was checking out some geekwear sites since I'm in the market for more new Tees for around the house and after work. It's so goddamned hot I have to rip off my long sleeve work shirts and get into something more comfortable as quick as fucking possible or I'll burst into righteous flame.

There are dozens of places to buy T-shirts especially online and I wish that I'd book marked more of them but the two I keep going back to check out are:

http://www.errorwear.com/
http://www.jinx.com/

Both sites have bitching shirts and picking up a couple on my next paycheck cycle.
Work's a bitch and then some but Hey at least I'm gainfully employed, and respected in very small circles. Maybe respect is too much, I'd say that I'm at least not ignored on a regular basis.
The two new guys that are in training on the helpdesk will probably be ok. Neither one is retard and god knows we don't need any more retards at work. They both wish they were somewhere else like on the programming staff. Neither one has any real practicle prog experience but they both paid out the bunghole for an ITT tech BA in programming which by the way is totally non-transferrable or recognized anywhere outside of ITT Tech. Can you believe that it costs nearly 30K to get a BA in Programming at ITT Tech and another 30K to move up to a BS in Programming. I'm so way happy that I didn't go to school there. When and IF my woman finishes school then I'll go to school myself. Until then it's learning the old fashioned way at work on the job and at the library.

A buddy at work asked me to blog about the types of typical users we deal with on the helpdesk.
Now I oblige:

On a helpdesk there are two main catagories of users; Technical and Non Technical.
Now I'd be doing a dis-service to helpdeskers everywhere if I didn't clarify those two categories. This might draw some ire from different camps but let's treat helpdesk callers the same way insurance companies do. The insurance company lumps policy holders into two camps; smokers, and those that lie about smoking (just kidding).

Now of course we could sub-categorize this list even further and say that from the Non-Technical side you would further sub-divide into Passive and Agressive Non Technical Users. Passive users are just passive they are very understanding they don't know dick about the PC culture and really just need something to work good enough to get buy. I love helping these people so long as they listen and roll-over well. If they listen well and do exactly what you tell them you're gravy. The call will get resolved and you won't want to frag somebody. If they are not passive users then turn Agressive.

Now agressive Non Technical users vary from Aggressive Agitated to Agressive Meglamaniacal. These calls can be scary as hell. Not only is the person on the other end of the line in trouble (they did call you for help remember) they are mad and don't know who to be mad at (themselves), or they are fucking incensed and ready to come choke you out with their wireless mouse (another lame ass geek joke). We all know people like this. Roomates, fathers, neighbors, cube-bitches, etc. I won't go into much detail. Your knee-jerk reaction is to just hang up and say "go fuck yourself" but since work records every call and you really need that lame ass paycheck to cover your bounced check charges for Battlefield2 then you just suffer and get pwned.

Now lets turn this discourse over to the Technical Users.

It's these kind of people you hate to love or love to hate. Most people would call Technical Help Desk callers "Power Users". This might be an appropriate term except their ain't a whole lot of power in a power user if they have to call the helpdesk yet. Most of the time the Technical user just wants to demonstrate he's not a dumb ass. They just really got in over their heads on something or god forbid they are just calling you to get validation on a great "idea" that just popped into their head. If you're lucky you can just suffer through the call and find an alternative solution that isn't going to break something else.

Now let's talk about those fuckers you'd love to hire out a contract killer for. Technical Users who know they are "right" about something and think your a dumb ass. First why the hell are you calling for help if you know the right answer? I mean what gives that's like asking for advice and then arguing with with someone about how to implement the advice they asked for. When these people call they are really just out for blood and frustrated but you're going to be on the receiving end of their idiocy. I could start a whole new blog about these people. The most uberdangerous thing about these blokes is that when they are probably either hired outside help or even worse family members or close personal friends of the business owner and you can't really tell them how dumb they are. Even more so when you hang up the call all they are going to do is bitch about how shitty tech support is and how they can only get dumbasses on the phone when they call. If you know so-fucking-much then why did you call?

It's past midnight and I'm bone ass tired and head is pounding so I'm going to go get some sleep
to ready for the mind-ass-raping I'm going to get at work.

Word.

Posted by Jeff Estes while cleaning his handgun.