Mundane Ramblings

…of a nerd.

This is what I have been elbow deep in the last two days.

Lovely, isn’t it?

** Update:

As Rob mentioned below, this isn’t exactly the recommended way to route cables, let alone mixing cable types (ha!) which I suppose in a real data centre is a large no-no.  But this is a government data centre, and the prevailing theme here is to do the least amount of work possible, so this is what happens after 10 years or so.  You are free to formulate your own metaphor from this picture, having it symbolize the red tape and bureaucracy most of us identify with when we think “government”.

Ali sent along a sample of what happens in her tech writer world.

She helpfully mentions:

Notice how eight cables per side rail are invisible behind 1/8 of an inch of rack flange. Also observe the tidy, physics-defying 90-degree cable bends which are helpful in these situations.

I will have to amend our real life data centre to reflect the manufacturer’s view of these sorts of things ASAP.  Most notably absent in Ali’s picture is the patina of grime and dust that dulls every surface in our location, befouling the fingers of anyone foolish enough to try to impose order in the chaos.  Trust me, I know all about the grime.

Installing Windows 7 and in status bar land….

It seems that jjnoonan.com has awakened again, much like a rare magical portal that opens only once every three years, and for now we have a brief view into the mind of good friend Noonan.  Go now, while it lasts.

I said I wasn’t going to post about running any more, but maybe just one more.

At least two things have occurred to me recently while running:  you don’t generally want to use the earbuds you wear running in non-running situations, and carrying your iPhone in your sweaty hand while running is awkward, dangerous and often disgusting.

First off, running with earbuds in is a necessity.  The problem is that when I run, my ears head everything sweats and so the earbuds are in contact with said sweat.  Then, once I am all showered and ready for work, the thought of putting those earbuds into my clean ears gives me the willies.  I have a mental image of my smelly ears emitting twin visible vapour trails of BO behind me as I walk around at work.  So, I will therefore be buying a set of cheap earbuds for exclusive use while running.  Problem solved.

Next is the necessity of carrying the iPhone while running.  I never purchased a belt clip, case or anything I can use to fasten the iPhone to my person, so if I want to track my runs I need to carry the iPhone in my hand as I run.  This becomes an issue since as you can imagine my hand gets a tad sweaty and my grip on the phone becomes a little precarious.  An armband is the ticket, for sure.  This decision is a bit harder, since there are a ton of options out there.  Haven’t decided yet, but I think I like this one.

That’s it, no more running posts.

Permit me to rant for just a moment, if you will.

Got the girls’ cell phone bill last week, opened it and was unpleasantly surprised to see it was about double what it normally is.  Further analysis revealed that the extra charges were from mobile browsing, almost $50 for each phone.  Wow, that’s a lot of mobile browsing, you might say.  You would be wrong.  The amount of data for each phone was less than a megabyte, in fact.  Let’s put that into perspective here: that much data would fit onto a floppy disk, if you remember what those are.    The rate for this charge was there in black and white:  $51.20/MB

I can’t be the only one thinking that’s a little excessive, when (as I found out) you can get an all-you-can browse plan for $3/month?  Even at 3G speeds (and these phones aren’t 3G), my iPhone plan with Rogers is $30 for 6GB/month.  That’s a half a cent/MB folks, or approximately 5000 times cheaper.  I understand they want to drive people to use their data plans, and pay for capacity they aren’t using, but this smacks of robbery to me.

Needless to say I called to complain about the charges and to Bell’s credit they reversed the charges for me, but only because I don’t complain often.

What gives?

If I had a nickel for every time I did this….

Not naming any names.

(at least a few readers are nervously shifting and looking around to see if anyone is looking at them)