Ryan's Currently Unnamed Blog

Halloween comes a few hours early for me.... Scary!

So.. its about 8:30... i'm finishing up some things here at work.. First day back in the office after being out most of last week for training... I happened to notice THIS on our production web server's homepage (and ever page on every site):

This.. for those of you who may not have guessed.. is a BAD thing. Turns out that IIS (Microsoft's webserver) is crashing right when it starts up.. even on a completely plain website. After running down a lot of possible solutions... we have come up with absolutely nothing. Other then a mysterious entry in the system log:

A process serving application pool 'DefaultAppPool' terminated unexpectedly. The process id was '3952'. The process exit code was '0x80'.

So... I isolated out the main website into its own application pool... and it crashes immediately. Ok.. I disable all the webserver extensions.. still crashes. Finally, create a pool for a basic HTML only website.. and it too fails to produce any different results.

Seeing as how a large percentage of our business relies on this actually working, we are faced with a decision... switch to a back up server that can't really handle the load too well, or.. bend over and call Microsoft for a Paid Phone Support Call. After deciding that its critical to get this machine up and running we pull the trigger on the support call.

That was about 10:30PM once we got the call started... Pleasantly surprised to find out that the normal cost of a support call, $245, only applies from 6am - 6pm Pacific time. Since we are unlucky enough to have a problem in off hours... this little beauty is costing us $490 (see MS site).

It's now 11:45 and I've spoken to two people at microsoft to describe the problem just for them to figure out who I should be directed to. The last 45 minutes or so I've been on hold for. Will keep adding to this post to keep my sanity alive while I'm trying to resolve this.

Food... oh, how I love thee...

ha... ok, I know I don't have the best diet in the world... I eat a lot of fast food.. and I probably should have a cholesterol level somewhere in the 400s and weigh like 350 pounds... but, last time i checked, my cholesterol was low and I'm still trying to put on weight... 185 pounds for 6'3" isn't hefty... but anyway.. on to my point...

I've written before about Burger King and their tacos... I probably go to my local BK 4 or 5 times a week. And I order the same thing. Its good. The people there know me. Not sure if that's good or not. But pefection in a fast food burger = a whopper with no pickles or tomato and for the last 6 months or so... every BK meal is accompanied by two of their tacos. Awesome.

Couple that with the fact that the closest BK to home is open until 3am during the week and 24 hours on the weekend... and well... yeah.. its just ideal.

There's actually a second BK that's a little easier to get to from work. I went there today for lunch, well.. at 4:45pm.. i'm not sure if that qualifies as 'lunch'. Mainly because I saw a commercial for a new Italian Chicken Sandwich. Supposed to have chicken with mozzerella and marinara. Mine came plain. And the two tacos were also noticiably missing. AND there was no receipt in the bag. By the time I found the number and called them, it was like an hour later.

At least I get to eat a free lunch there tomorrow.. but wtf?!? I can see some fuckups occaisionally... I've had no mayo instead of no tomato before. That's understandable. And there's no way i got someone else's order.

Oh well.. i guess its just too much to expect a minimum wage person to care about their job to get it right. Just SOOO disappointing. Probably a good sandwich... but unless its stellar tomorrow... this one experience soured it forever... probably will be back to my good old standby #1, king sized with tacos... and at my regular BK....

Tried to get out of the same old rut... but everytime I veer away from the tried and true... it always goes wrong... So.. to everyone that ever made fun of me ALWAYS getting the same thing... THIS is why i don't mess with a good thing. lol

Ok, pointless entry over... mountains of work to do...

Oh the humanity! Not sure what has happened, but my home comps have taken a turn for the worse. Here's a report of the uptime of my machines at home...

fenchurch   down  11+13:19
ford        down   6+10:47
marvin      down   5+22:34
trillian      up  36+09:06,     0 users,  load 0.00
zaphod        up  13+18:38,     2 users,  load 0.02

First of all.. bonus points to anyone to knows where the names for my machines came from... and super bonus points if they could explain why each name is appropriate.

Fenchurch is an old dell laptop... been on its last legs for a while... and parts of the keyboard stopped responding a while ago intermittantly.. its been taken apart and put back together and taken apart again and is currently in several pieces strewn about... not a pretty sight, and I'm pretty sure its beyond repair...

Ford is a linux workstation... it refuses to even begin to boot up... no clue what's wrong with it.. haven't been able to mess with it lately.. that happened a week ago... (or 6 days, 10 hours, 47 minutes ago.. to be exact)

Marvin is attached to my TV and used to be my TiVo replacement (MythTV in case anyone cares) but since it doesn't do HD, and my crappy comcast DVR can kinda record stuff... sometimes... its been relegated to being a jukebox that plays music... rarely... can probably scrap that project and repurpose it... nothing wrong with that machine.. the power went out and its on a power strip with a really sensative breaker that needs to be manually reset whenever it loses power. Just haven't bothered to reset it.

Zaphod is a dual processor machine that used to get my mail and ran a lot of web stuff, but that's mostly been moved off to my real server on a real connection... it still does some stuff, but that can probably be moved over to trillian...

Trillian is my 'new' firewall/router... the old trillian was a Pentium-166, circa 1996 or so. The hard drive in it had been going for a while.. and it finally crashed.. hard... so... its now an old Pentium II I had laying around... took a weekend to rebuild that machine... but its much better off... old one had 8MB of memory and 2GB of total hard drive space.. but still managed around 400+ days of uptime... its got a ways to go still.

Speaking of uptime.. zaphod used to get up to about 100 days before randomly locking up due to a poor SMP support on the motherboard and linux pushing it a bit too hard. but now its been dying at about 30 days.

Anyway, the point of this is... I have a lot of work ahead of me to figure out what's going on with this stuff... I think that I'm gonna be putting the remains of fenchurch into a newer laptop that's also having some issues... but that's gonna be a project that might take months to finish.. and quite possible could end up being a big waste of time that results in some burned out laptop hardware.. eh.. will see where it goes.

Every now and then... you hear a song that suddenly takes on new meaning... I've owned the latest NIN CD With Teeth (Hover over that link for a nifty new amazon popup, not sure how much i like it.. i generally get annoyed by such things... lemme know what you think). There's lots of tracks on there.. but I've never really thought much about "Getting Smaller"... good song, but not a standout... kinda felt more like filler then anything else.

However, yesterday.. while driving home in the FREEZING cold weather.. I this song came on.. and suddenly the lyrics had all new applications...

Anyway.. here's the lyrics and if you want to hear it.. here ya go.

Getting a little erratic here (Erratic perfectly describes has little consistency there is in my day to day life over the last month or two.)
And I don't know who to trust (Too many betrayals to mention... friends, family, work)
I guess they got a way of reading my mind (Work monitoring computer usage... governments monitoring phone calls)
I guess I gotta adjust (So much has changed... I have been forced into some adjustments, others i know i should make but haven't yet)
Got my arms they flip flop flip flop flip
Got my head on a spring (Ha.. love that idiom... but yeah.. definatley been watching my back lately.. very aware of the forces at work around me. Some call it paranoia.. i call it self preservation.)
Well I thought I got you on my side (again.. betrayals)
I haven't got fucking anything (seems like sooo much is missing)

I'm just a face in the crowd (Just a nobody.. nothing to distinguish me from anyone else)
Nothing to worry about
Not even tryin' to stand out (I've accepted this.. and given up trying to be special in some way)
I'm getting smaller and smaller and smaller (outside of my office (and that's only because nobody else can do what I do)... my importance to the outside world is diminishing every day)
And I have nothing to say (well, this line doesn't really fit.. i always have plenty to say.. but i'm losing the will to try to assert that or to have people understand me)
It's all been taken away (I've really feel like I've lost huge chunks of my life... important parts too.)
I just behave and obey (I've given up on so much... I just go along with the flow.. doing what people want me to do)
I'm afraid I am starting to fade away (and in the process... I'm losing who I am)

Uh-huh

I cannot see through the cracks
When I'm pressed up on the wall
I'm not looking to stand up real high (I don't expect to return to my former self)
I'd be happy to crawl (i'd be happy with just a tiny bit of progress though)
I think I'm losing my grip (there have definatley been moments that were difficult to deal with)
But I can still make a fist
You know I still got my one good arm (hey! my right arm may be fucked, but i DO still have one good arm!)
That I can beat...
nnn, I can beat myself up with! (i've tried.. doesn't work)

I'm just a face in the crowd
Nothing to worry about
Not even tryin' to stand out
I'm getting smaller
And smaller and smaller
And I have nothing to say
Its all been taken away
I just behave and obey
I'm afraid I am starting to fade away

And for what it is worth (This sentiment of this verse applies to SOOO many things.. i can't even begin to list them here)
I really used to believe
That maybe there's some great thing
That we could achieve
And now I cant tell the difference
Don't know what to feel
Between what I've been trying so hard to see
And what appears to be real

Fading away (indeed)
Fading away
Fading away
Fading away

My world is getting smaller everyday-yay-yay-yay-yay (indeed... it really is, and i'm surprisingly ok with it)
My world is getting smaller everyday-yay-yay-yay-yay
(and thats ok)

My world is getting smaller everyday-yay-yay-yay-yay
My world is getting smaller everyday-yay-yay-yay-yay
(and thats ok)

OK.. enough of my bitching.. just one of those things that line up so nicely with what's going on, and when i first heard the song I couldn't relate to much of it at all. Funny how things change.. well.. that's all.. for now...

So.. yeah.. my life has been reduced to working long hours and coming home, maybe spending 30 minutes on a laptop before i can't take anymore then watching TV, most likely [adult swim], or a DVD, probably my 40 disk Buffy the Vampire Slayer set... up to season 4 now... yay.

I've also aquired all the episodes of Sealab 2021, Detective Conan (aka, Case Closed in the US), Full Metal Alchemist, and One Piece... Would really like to burn those to a DVD so that I can watch them on my TV... That's easily about 6 months of entertainment right there. Oh well.. someday...

Also get to pass time by playing my stack of PS2 games I haven't played in like... ever. So many entertaining games... I'll post about those some other time though. I also got a Nintendo DS... along with a stack of games.... but i'll leave those to some other posts. They came out with the Lite versions a while ago that were smaller and had longer battery life then the original, i thought about buying one.. but I couldn't bring myself to buying a white one. They just came out with Black and Pink... well.. Onyx and Coral.. and I highly recommend it.

All this is well and good.. and an adequate way to pass the time.. but.. really feeling like i need to get out some. Can't remember the last time I went out that wasn't to go to work, or to buy food. And worst of all.. its October... Halloween is coming. Six Flags has fright fest going on.. which would be awesome to go to, especially since my company got half off admission coupons since we had a party there. Not to mention halloween parties or anything fun like that.

Plus.. i had to pass on TWO concerts I would have loved to go see... Veruca Salt (ok.. Louise is the only person still in the band and I haven't heard ANY of their new stuff.. but would be awesome to see them.. ya know.. for old time's sake) at the double door on 9/29... and the Insane Clown Posse on 10/1 (First time in 3 years that I'll be missing the Hallowicked tour... sucks)

Leaves are changing... had awesome weather in the upper 70s the last few weeks.. and I'm stuck inside... would have been an awesome time to go to a forest preserve and geocache or something. Perfect excuse to enjoy the weather and the colors.. but nooo.. i'm too messed up to do that. I'm starting to feel somewhat better... almost like i could actually go out this weekend and do some of that... but... the weather? they are saying we might get flurries in a couple days.

Fall was nice.. guess winter is just about here already... wheee.. At least the Bears are winning... but even those games haven't been fun to watch and I quickly lose interest once we are winning by 20 points...

Joy.. i'll quit my bitching though.. I got plenty of stuff to do.

I know i haven't updated things here.. there's actually two or three posts that aren't public yet because i haven't completed them yet because its still a pain to use a computer from home... and... well.. work has been crazy busy so I haven't really had the time to write anything from here either...

so yeah... I just had to make a comment here because its probably been about a week since i looked at this blog.. and a little longer since i cleared out all the comment/trackback spam. Sepetember 29th is the last time i cleared it out.. and there has been FIVE HUNDRED SEVENTY EIGHT trackbacks... and every single one has been for a porn site or an 'online pharmacy'.

So, uhh.. yeah... seeing as how that's being abused way more then it should be... i'm probably going to be doing away with the automatic trackbacks... its just crazy! Not like anybody uses it anyway... but i figured i'd post about this here, because.. like.. i haven't in forever.

I also have a pile of email to go through... grah.. so much to do.. so little i can do.. yay