Hokey.

you route some packets in,
you route some packets out,
you flap the interface,
and you get some packet loss.

You do the Hokey-Pokey
and you call up Tech Support.
That's what it's all about!

"Blog(People)Power"

The CBC strike (and to a lesser degree the Telus strike) have been somewhat radicalized by Blogs. This excites me to no end, because it is people, albeit highly media-savvy people, wrestling their media out of the hands of the corporations. In the past, people like me would have had to rely on news filtered through more corporate media. It is interesting listening to the perspectives from the people that are directly affected, without heavy editing.

The workers haven't stopped doing what they love to do, just because they can't get into the studios anymore. They are the CBC and so are we.

http://www.cbcunplugged.com/
http://thetyee.ca/News/2005/08/22/CBCUnplugged/

http://radio.blogware.com
-Lots of CBC blogs here.

Studio Zero streaming broadcast (I hate the term "Podcast")
Joe Keithley and East Van's own Geoff Berner play live on the pickets.

An interesting note on BBC's union not really liking the fact their wireservice is being pressed into scabbing.

and the whole thing deserved a mention on my favorite: Metafilter

plus there is a couple great CBC employee blogs I think deserve mention that haven't been mentioned in these sourcest: http://slushpile.blogspot.com http://cannedclams.blogspot.com -keep your chins up!

as Deb said in her Blog- just wait till hockey season for the fur to start flying.

More on Telus later- my father-in-law expects they'll be out for the rest of the year.

today at work, Salesperson phoned the other techs and asked them to escalate a firewall issue for Big Customer to the configuration group. I phoned BC and looked at the issue. Seeing nothing obviously wrong, i told them what I saw and was told to escalate as they'd been promised. i called sysadmin pager #1, no answer, pager #2, same thing. I called OnDutySysadmin at home and left two messages, no answer. I called Manager#2, next up in chain of escalation, played phone tag for a bit then was told to call Manager#2, as it is his group that deals with configuring devices , M#2 tells me to call M#1. I call M#1 and tell him I am calling his technical guy, where I leave a mesg. This guy is going to have to call M#2's technical guy to make any sense of this problem. All along, we have been asked to escalate to M#2's technical guy, who is technically on call this weekend, but the interdepartmental boundaries have to be respected.

Sometimes I think I work for the smallest byzantine bureaucracy ever invented.

I called Salesperson and told her she should be the one calling people who aren't home to do things they don't want to do.

What sucks about my job, is I am the only one who cannot refuse ownership of customer problems. I have to listen to all their bitching and I end up having to fix the problem myself anyways, with more problems piling up. Yet, senior management will never realize this, because they think I can escalate things and people will take ownership of them and then I can simply move to the next thing. When things are escalated to me, they are not recorded.
When things are escalated to me, they are not recorded. Meanwhile, people's inability to take responsibility for their own work makes my work flow appear to stop in the eyes of management.

my rubble garden

The courtyard of my townhouse is gone for repairs until at least december, when I will get a nice new courtyard. Question is, will I still be living there then?

Update: the only plants I will be allowed will be in pots, which can look nice, but are way more work. my trees (I have 6 decent-sized trees) will be gone, I will be working with the arborists to save what we can. I am such a softy that I hate to cut down a tree or other plant that is healthy unless it is a trumpet vine, which I hate passionately.

Like everyone else, I want to kick the ass of whoever designed and built this place. As much as I like renovating, I wish I was just improving my place, instead of ripping it to the guts just to make it work properly and not grow mold inside.

I just pray it gets done quick, so I can enjoy the benefits. Then I can finally start my bonsai and otherwise stunted plant garden that I've always wanted. I have some little trees in pots now that would make ideal bonsai candidates. Now hopefully I can culture them without killing them.

My cousin Traci is now a real estate agent. She's also of German and Scottish ancestry. You know what famous person is German and Scottish?

Christopher Walken.

Interesting.

Me on the other hand, I'm pretty much German with a dash of Polish, which is typical for NorthEastern Germans. I always prided myself onbeing one of the few people I knew in Canada who wasn't at least partly English/Scottish/Irish/Welsh.

Anyway, I don't know if this is real, but if he's not a total bigot, I might vote for him (if I were American, which I am not). Perhaps with Bruce Springsteen as VP. I know he's got some politics I agree with.

Walken2008.com