Never been one to let the carrier drop

Fairly recently, I helped in a data rescue operation following a backup that didn’t include everything it should have.

Yesterday, I got chewed out for running unauthorized fiber and not letting the SAN people do their jobs. I should point out that none of the SAN people were actually *there*, and I was, and it’s very hard to run fiber via a network connection.

Now, since I was the only person – as far as I know – who had any idea what port the fiber needed to be connected to, and since the fiber was already run – and since I stayed up until 1a working on this so that the missing data could be returned to it’s former home – and since no one else seemed to be lining up to coordinate this operation – being chewed out for it tends to piss me off. More to the point, it makes me inclined to let someone else handle the details next time something like this comes up.

What I’m trying to figure out is what exactly I can say to the chewer to make it clear to them that they have made a major mistake without actually getting fired.

Oh.. another thing which may help the debt situation.. for the first time in several years I’ve gotten a raise. Woo, hoo, etc. Pity that after you count the higher cost of living in CA, it still probably equates to a net pay cut.. 😉

S.

I’m not willing to have anyone hurt or killed in the process of removing the government. I’d like a completely bloodless upgrade, carefully orchistrated, and with a backup plan for restoring the current corrupted operating system if the new OS didn’t turn out to be better.

Yes, I understand what bakeme is saying with it being very difficult to create – or at least find – intellectual property. Remember that creating IP is one of the things that I do fairly regularly at my job, and that I’ve helped create a CD, and many of my own tracks. I understand that this isn’t a easy thing to do.

But I also understand that somewhere.. maybe on earth or maybe in a galaxy far, far away – another musician is likely creating the exact same tracks – and that I shouldn’t ‘own’ the ideas because I created them first. Ideas are free for all.

For that matter, when you speak of someone else taking my novel and making millions – well, aside from the fact that my name appears on the cover, if I get a publisher to publish it, chances are that’s what happens. In the music industry, it’s not the artists (with a few notible exceptions) who are getting rich, it’s the publishers. So, we’re already there.

I think the world would be a better place if there was no *need* to worry about ownership of intellectual property. We could all have access to any IP we want, and the authors and artists could have no worry of starving or being unable to feed their children or unable to pay the morgage.

Yes, this is another of my ‘money sucks’ posts.

I’m sorry that my attitudes and views annoy so many of you. Would you all rather that I didn’t write about them? I’m not going to stop thinking the way I do, and it does make me somewhat unhappy when people speak – often in a somewhat aggressive tone – about how wrongheaded I am.

http://news.com.com/8301-10784_3-9719339-7.html

Look – intellectual property isn’t really a reasonable thing. If you have a idea 20 minutes sooner than I do, should you own that idea? If I claim that I invented the number 2, and that all numbers that are factors of the number two should have to pay licensing fees to me, does that make it either true or reasonable?

In order to try and stem the flow of napster et al, they’re willing to throw us in jail for life. It is time to remove this government and replace it with something sane. How long before individual words become intellectual property, and the Heinlien estate sues anyone who uses grok without paying a license fee? How long before I get charged with piracy because I can remember a song? The slope has gone beyond slippery, and is now approaching levels of frictionlessness commonly associated with mag-lev trains. The ‘older and wiser’ heads are abusing their position with nothing but interest in personal gain.. how long before they ask for the death sentance for people making illegal copies of Word? Which circle of Hell am I in, anyway?

So I got a email from someone with their life rankings, which were considerably higher than mine, and I’ve oscillated between several reactions.

The first is that I feel like they’re poking at me a bit, since they do not follow the same life path as I do at all.. ‘see, if you’d follow my path instead of your own, you’d have higher scores’.

Actually, emailing me and me alone with their scores rather than posting them in their journal seems to me to almost be a act of attempting to rub my face in the fact that their life is going better than mine. And yet, I would hate to be so petty.. I mean, I should be happy for my friend. They’re on a good spot, and that’s great, and I shouldn’t be at all annoyed that they’re emailing me about how good things are..

On http://www.google.com/technology/, they talk about “low cost PC’s”.

I’m unclear on why that gets a apostrophe. I agree that when I type PCs, it’s tempting to put a apostrophe there, but under what rule? I thought apostrophes either indicated possessiveness (and clearly the PCs don’t own themselves) or the contraction of multiple words (and again, not relevant). There’s a third usage – plurals, and that seems the most likely, since there are indeed many PCs, but then I looked up the rules.. http://owl.english.purdue.edu/handouts/grammar/g_spelnoun.html .. and it didn’t seem like that was the reason either. Of course, purdue.edu might be incorrect, and I do think the common usage is PC’s, but.. odd.

Before 2004, I didn’t *have* any debt. At all.

I suppose in some ways it’s good.. when I’ve paid it all off, I’ll have a record of having paid it all off, which will mean I can qualify for a car loan – which I will get, and then pay off the next day, so I can then qualify for a home loan – which, after I’ve saved for about two years, I’ll have enough for a down payment and $BANKING_SYSTEM will then own my soul.. wait a second, do I really want to do this…?

I’m undecided about home “ownership”. Among other things, I wouldn’t actually own it until I’m 50, and in the meantime it would be one more thing for $THE_MAN to hold over my head. And even if I owned it outright, the government could decide they want to seize it – right now they only do that for drugs, but how long before they do it for saying the wrong things? I mean, yes, that’s paranoid, but..

On the other hand, if I owned it, I could modify it to my tastes without worrying about a exact ‘undo’ procedure for when the landlord got it back.

Third hand, though, I’d like a bigger house than I can ever afford in Orange County.. but I really like California..

Hm. Maybe I’ll win the lotto.

So, for the first time since the middle of 2005, I am paying a credit card down to $0.

Not only that, I have high hopes to repeat this feat in two weeks, and again two weeks after that.

Partially I have to credit Kayti, who is much better at organizing financial matters than I am [I suspect she’s already saved me $500+ in overdraft fees, overdue bill fees, etc]

I’m still not – as you all noticed from a earlier post – exactly well-organized in my finances, but they’re slowly becoming less overwhelming.

My prior landlord chose to sit on a check for four months, and my somewhat less than organized accounting system let it fall off my radar. When deposited, it drew my account negative, and as a result, I got charged two overdraft fees.

These fees.. $34 each.. were for moving bits around in a register.

I’m sorry, but I feel like I’m being taken advantage of here. $34? I could understand $10, but $34? What if I were paid minimum wage? That’d be like five hours of work.. for something that a computer did automatically.

Face it – capitolism is a tool for the evil side of the fence, not the good one.