DLand - That Second Goddamn Rat

Bossman and I are in the kitchen just now, rooting through our new box of Lindt chocolates. One in particular is the Lindor XXO Heart chocolate. "Rich, dark chocolate filled with a soft melting white Lindor center, carved with a message of love." Bossman: "Mmm. XXO Heart. Wonder if that's like an XXX Heart."

Me: "Carved with a message of love?"

Bossman: "They don't put those chocolates in the variety box. They keep those behind the counter."

Me: "Do they still have the soft creamy filling?"

The network connection to our office has been going up and down all morning. Supposedly they are replacing a firewall server somewhere and it's not going well. But we can only sit here and wait for it to get fixed. Meanwhile, I have to try to provide technical support with no internet connection. It's downright infuriating. Everytime I ping a server and get timed out, my blood starts pumping and I shake my fists at the monitor.

My father tells this story. Ok, Daddy tells lots of stories. But he tells one story in particular about two rats. I actually saw a French film once that alluded to this same concept but I can't remember the name of it. All I remember is businessmen with giant rat head costumes. But I digress.

There is an experiment in which two rats are placed in little rat cubes - one in each cube. The scientists then give each rat a mild electric shock over and over again. One rat has a button that will stop the shocks for X amount of minutes for both cubes. That rat figures out pretty quickly that if he hits the button, the shocks stop for a while. The other rat just sits in his cube and takes it.

So after a while they take out the two rats. The rat with the button is absolutely fine. He's probably a little grumpy, but physically he shows no ill effects of the electric shock experience. The second rat (without the button) is a wreck. His hair has fallen out, he's got ulcers, heart palpitations, tumors, twitches, you name it - he's got it. He received the exact same amount of shock as the first rat. But he had no button. Invariably this story comes up with my father and he ends it with "and I feel like that second goddamn rat."

I think about those rats a lot. That you can take a lot of stress or unpleasantness if you feel like you have at least a little control over it. You can't solve the problem, but you can do something. You have a button, for lack of a better term. And in the same vein, if you have no button, no way of affecting your situation, you're suddenly "that second goddamn rat." The unpleasantness is magnified by your own inability to make a difference.

So I'm trying to find myself some buttons. Easier said than done at times.

DLand - Hey Baby, Nice Rack

Well, we are almost done installing the new rack system in our server room. It's been a long road, full of lots of purchases we didn't think of, but it's looking pretty kick ass now. Last Friday was the big circus. We had to try and move all of this stuff during the day but yet keep everything up and running as much as possible. The rack cabinet itself weighs about 250 lbs. and then there was the rack mounted UPS and the 1u rack mounted servers (the pizza boxes) and the conversion kit for our original tower model server to become rack mountable. I got to work at 7am and we left at 9pm. And we were only about half-way done at that point.

We ordered new network cables in one of every color. The lines coming out of the wall look like something from \"Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor LAN\". And then the phone system....

That's when things were starting to get fun. We have this way cool phone system here. But it's all a nest of phone wires. And all of this is crucial to us even receiving a phone call in the office. No biggie. Well, needless to say a very proprietary cable got bent and had to be put back together so that we could function. Bah.

And then we built the whole rack system only to find out that the last item to go in wouldn't fit. That meant taking everything out of the rack system and moving to vertical posts back about three inches and then putting it all back together again.

So we then go to put the last server in but somebody decided to not listen to the instructions and wanted to try some new way of mounting it. Needless to say the new way didn't work and we had to take more stuff apart to put it back together. At that point I think we were ready to kick each other.

But now it's looking pretty groovy. All our little machines are in a stack and humming along. It's like a real honest to goodness server room. And I get to show off my rack to folks who come in the office.

I shouldn't complain about our server situation too much, though. I got a phone call today from a guy in Alabama who said they were recovering from a \"squirrel attack\" in the main server room where the little guy had gotten in and pulled wires and chewed through cables. Amazing.

DLand - So How Was New Orleans?

Hours spent in New Orleans this weekend: 67Hours spent in Harrah's Casino this weekend: ~24 Hours spent in the French Quarter: 0 Hours I slept last night: 3 Dollars won at video poker because not in bed: $200 Dollars lost at the craps table because not in bed: $100

So Thursday, I'm at Best Buy picking up some music during lunch. I open my wallet to hand the cashier my debit card and realized that I didn't have my driver's license. My first thought.

"Fuck. Must use another credit card."

All of my debit cards have "Ask for photo id" written on the back. And wouldn't that have been embarrassing for the one time the cashier actually asks for it, I can't produce. So I quickly switched cards. My second thought.

"Fuck! How am I going to get into Harrah's tomorrow?!"

No, not "How am I going to get on a plane in the airport" or "Should I really be driving around today with no driver's license". It was all about Harrah's. I have my priorities straight, as you can see. Needless to say, I had left it in the back seat of my car when I had gone to the credit union to stock my bankroll for the weekend. We were reunited that afternoon and I obviously got on the plane and went to my conference and my casino.

We ate beignets. Mmm, fried dough. That and Harrah's and the gumbo are about all that I need from New Orleans. It's really not a town that calls to me. I would take Las Vegas over it any day. But I did have a pretty good time and winning in the casino didn't hurt that overall assessment at all.

Too tired to update much more than that. But if you need some help with video poker or craps strategy, let me know.