Placid
It's been awhile since my last post and I think it's because I've calmed down a lot.
Don't get me wrong I still do helpdesk for a living so I still have plenty to rage about.
I have no idea how long I'll keep this blog thing up. I mean It's not costing me anything other than time really so I can't say it's costing me an arm and a leg (unlike my other habits). I should have a lot more time on my hands since we stopped paying for satellite TV. Of course I still have cable internet and the local library so I should be entertained for awhile to come. I think I also signed a contract for the Direct TV so maybe I am screwed.
Things are calming down at work since upper management finally made some changes to the work environment. (It's amazing how much better work gets when your immediate supervisor gets the proverbial box!
Now everyone kind of just gets to work and actually gets work done. It seems like more of my fellow co-tech's (KOTEX's as the "stick" is always prone to say), are coping with the changes at work better. It's a little weird not having an immediate supervisor to report to, we kind of just make group decisions but it seems to work. I hope that upper management decides to kind of leave things alone and see our how our little social experiment gets along. It will probably work just fine until someone really f*&^s up and someone has to pay the piper.
Since I don't have a lot of pent up angst to vent on and on about I guess I get a little offtopic and go over a couple of things my two visitors might be wondering about.
Scoolio (what the hell is that name all about?)
When I got my first Pentium class machine and starting heavy surfing and posting on Usenet I decided I needed a consistent handle for my online persona. I think it was around late 93 that I was working as a Customer Service Manager at Hastings and Coolio had just started hitting hard on MTV and we were getting deluged with calls and requests for his single which wasn't released for probably at least a month after hit the top end of the charts.
Anyway I had just recently spent around 5 grand on my first Pentium Class Machine:
Acer (Solid black Case)
Pentium .75 (yes that's 3/4 of a Gig)
32 meg's of Ram
1.75 Gig Hard drive (yes that's less than 2 gigs)
28 speed modem
4x speed CD-ROM
HP SCUZI scanner
Epson Color Printer
17 Inch Packard Bell monitor (yes that company)
This was a smoking system at the time and it wasn't off white in color. I was the envy of all geek kids. I had a good paying job and fastest computer on the block. Mosaic was relatively new and I just paid like 50 bucks for a copy of Spry Mosaic in the form of Spry Internet in a box. (Yes this was before the whole Netscape Charge/Internet Explorer Free days).
Anyway I was really into the whole Coolio music theme but I didn't want to like totally rip coolio's handle and I wanted something more personal but at the same time mysterious so I choose Coolio's name and a medical affliction that had totally altered my life.
Scoliosis
As a child I was born with a very rare and serious case of scoliosis. For those of you who don't know what scoliosis is it's that thing they screen you for in school a couple of times before Junior High. At a very early age I think around the time I was three years old I was diagnosed with Dual Lumbar Ideo-pathic Scoliosis. Just means curvature of the lower and upper spinal column with no know origin. I think that now they would call it an extreme case of Lordosis and Kyphosis but I digress.
Anyway I was destined to grow up and proceed all the way through childhood and early adolescence in a full body cast. By full I mean from my pelvis all the way up to my right below my shoulder blades.
It was this body cast that kept me from really, fully getting to enjoy childhood. I couldn't ride bikes, climb trees, or stay exposed to heat for long periods of time. I also couldn't participate in most athletic activities at school, required a special seat or desk at school, and generally got singled out a lot for just being different. If you're a minority, have braces, pimples, bad breath, or you're not generally symmetrical then you know what I'm talking about.
If you've got a bowflex body, perfect teeth, supermodel spouse, and a six figure income then blow me and go read your GQ magazine and watch an episode of survivor and say to yourself I could so be there right now.
Without going off the deep end let me just say Scoliosis and Coolio became scoolio. There it is mystery solved.
Don't try to send me hatemail on my computer specs I listed above. That's what I remember. Now I had computers that pre-date that system, but it was that system that changed my life.
The internet had pictures and sounds, I was sneaking cigarettes from my mom, girls started to sound like a really good idea, I learned about revolving debt (still paying off that computer I think), and chatrooms were so much better than BBS boards (chat rooms had girls and GIF's :)
Later,
Don't forget support you local EFF chapters, Try Linux, Use an alternative browser, Tell your Mom you love but not to Visit, Hug your kids more;
Don't forget to vote, and find something to blog on about. It's cheaper than the alternative......The loss of our electronic rights and freedoms, Windows on your kitchen appliances, Mom telling my wife how to cook, Visiting the kids in prison, and another four years of "dubya", and paying for the right to bitch online!!!!
BLOGON!!!!
Posted by Jeff probably at some unseemingly late hour past his kids bedtime.
It's been awhile since my last post and I think it's because I've calmed down a lot.
Don't get me wrong I still do helpdesk for a living so I still have plenty to rage about.
I have no idea how long I'll keep this blog thing up. I mean It's not costing me anything other than time really so I can't say it's costing me an arm and a leg (unlike my other habits). I should have a lot more time on my hands since we stopped paying for satellite TV. Of course I still have cable internet and the local library so I should be entertained for awhile to come. I think I also signed a contract for the Direct TV so maybe I am screwed.
Things are calming down at work since upper management finally made some changes to the work environment. (It's amazing how much better work gets when your immediate supervisor gets the proverbial box!
Now everyone kind of just gets to work and actually gets work done. It seems like more of my fellow co-tech's (KOTEX's as the "stick" is always prone to say), are coping with the changes at work better. It's a little weird not having an immediate supervisor to report to, we kind of just make group decisions but it seems to work. I hope that upper management decides to kind of leave things alone and see our how our little social experiment gets along. It will probably work just fine until someone really f*&^s up and someone has to pay the piper.
Since I don't have a lot of pent up angst to vent on and on about I guess I get a little offtopic and go over a couple of things my two visitors might be wondering about.
Scoolio (what the hell is that name all about?)
When I got my first Pentium class machine and starting heavy surfing and posting on Usenet I decided I needed a consistent handle for my online persona. I think it was around late 93 that I was working as a Customer Service Manager at Hastings and Coolio had just started hitting hard on MTV and we were getting deluged with calls and requests for his single which wasn't released for probably at least a month after hit the top end of the charts.
Anyway I had just recently spent around 5 grand on my first Pentium Class Machine:
Acer (Solid black Case)
Pentium .75 (yes that's 3/4 of a Gig)
32 meg's of Ram
1.75 Gig Hard drive (yes that's less than 2 gigs)
28 speed modem
4x speed CD-ROM
HP SCUZI scanner
Epson Color Printer
17 Inch Packard Bell monitor (yes that company)
This was a smoking system at the time and it wasn't off white in color. I was the envy of all geek kids. I had a good paying job and fastest computer on the block. Mosaic was relatively new and I just paid like 50 bucks for a copy of Spry Mosaic in the form of Spry Internet in a box. (Yes this was before the whole Netscape Charge/Internet Explorer Free days).
Anyway I was really into the whole Coolio music theme but I didn't want to like totally rip coolio's handle and I wanted something more personal but at the same time mysterious so I choose Coolio's name and a medical affliction that had totally altered my life.
Scoliosis
As a child I was born with a very rare and serious case of scoliosis. For those of you who don't know what scoliosis is it's that thing they screen you for in school a couple of times before Junior High. At a very early age I think around the time I was three years old I was diagnosed with Dual Lumbar Ideo-pathic Scoliosis. Just means curvature of the lower and upper spinal column with no know origin. I think that now they would call it an extreme case of Lordosis and Kyphosis but I digress.
Anyway I was destined to grow up and proceed all the way through childhood and early adolescence in a full body cast. By full I mean from my pelvis all the way up to my right below my shoulder blades.
It was this body cast that kept me from really, fully getting to enjoy childhood. I couldn't ride bikes, climb trees, or stay exposed to heat for long periods of time. I also couldn't participate in most athletic activities at school, required a special seat or desk at school, and generally got singled out a lot for just being different. If you're a minority, have braces, pimples, bad breath, or you're not generally symmetrical then you know what I'm talking about.
If you've got a bowflex body, perfect teeth, supermodel spouse, and a six figure income then blow me and go read your GQ magazine and watch an episode of survivor and say to yourself I could so be there right now.
Without going off the deep end let me just say Scoliosis and Coolio became scoolio. There it is mystery solved.
Don't try to send me hatemail on my computer specs I listed above. That's what I remember. Now I had computers that pre-date that system, but it was that system that changed my life.
The internet had pictures and sounds, I was sneaking cigarettes from my mom, girls started to sound like a really good idea, I learned about revolving debt (still paying off that computer I think), and chatrooms were so much better than BBS boards (chat rooms had girls and GIF's :)
Later,
Don't forget support you local EFF chapters, Try Linux, Use an alternative browser, Tell your Mom you love but not to Visit, Hug your kids more;
Don't forget to vote, and find something to blog on about. It's cheaper than the alternative......The loss of our electronic rights and freedoms, Windows on your kitchen appliances, Mom telling my wife how to cook, Visiting the kids in prison, and another four years of "dubya", and paying for the right to bitch online!!!!
BLOGON!!!!
Posted by Jeff probably at some unseemingly late hour past his kids bedtime.
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