helpdeskblog

Afraid?

Got paraskavedekatriaphobia?

this is really just a test

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My Dream

I am riding into Lexington in my wife's white Mercury Sable. It is a snowy day and the roads are curvy. The odd thing is that my wife and I are sitting in back, and my five year old son is driving. I am arguing with my wife about how unsafe this is, but she keeps assuring me that it is ok. Once we reach the Lexington city limits I insist on driving, so she tells my son to pull over, which he does, right onto someone's front lawn. They drive into their driveway behind us and smile and wave. I get out and I am shifting the boy across the front seat when the Lexington Police show up, five officers in one car. They proceed to hassle me and give me a hard time about my inability to find my registration. I find it and give it to them. It then occurs to me that they couldn't have seen my son driving because we had just entered town. I ask them why they are stopping me and the officer in charge says "Unpaid library fines." At this point I think I realized that it was a dream and I woke up shortly thereafter, but not before we were taken to the police station.

SPAM on this blog

I've had it with all the complaints about how this Blog has broken bits, doesn't show archives, hoses RSS readers, and always, always lists the comments of The Help Desk Manager as spam. Always. You people do not seem to understand that the purpose of the blog is to give spammers somewhere to post their comments. Thousands of spam comments a year would have nowhere to exist if it weren't for the clever posts that we've done in the past. And the best feature of all this is that you can't get into the archive most of the time anyway so everybody wins, the spammers post, and you never have to look at the spam.

It may be that the purpose of your life is to serve as an example to others.

Brad4rd

We started to roll out a campus management solution yesterday evening, checking student computers for SAV, Widows Defender, Microsoft updates and the like. I do not hate my life, my job, my boss, my co-workers or the student population in general so I guess it was a big success. Of 80 odd computers checked only about 10% are still being locked off the network. and these are not apparently people who care much as everything we put out says call the helpdesk and we have only gotten two or three calls today.

I wonder if delisting the number was a good idea?

Letter to the blog Administrator

Dear Mr. Administrator,
Your blog is so weird. Your archive for anything after Sep 2006 send me to the stupid 404 not found page... It's weird I tell you...
Your truly,
Devoted Reader

Update on Spam Filter

Basically I've told the spam filter to send comments to the junk mail except by people who have already commented. I will try to check the junk mail filter at least once a week, but send me an e-mail if your comment has been held and I'll release it and you can join the many, many, many people commenting on this blog.

Serena, you had a new e-mail, which is why it didn't recognize it. I'm of half a mind to start posting on a separate blog where i can actually control the spam filter better...(ie. with captcha)

Worth 1000: Beta Busts 6

Worth 1000 has a lot of good photoshop contests. I think that the first one in the following, "TurboTax, Extreme Deductions" is especially appropriate in the following weeks/months...

http://www.worth1000.com/cache/gallery/contestcache.asp?contest_id=13634&display=photoshop

Let's do some Math

You may or may not have heard of the recent problems someone was having with Verizon...but for all you "MATH" majors out there, this is a great....
http://verizonmath.blogspot.com/2006/12/verizon-doesnt-know-dollars-from-cents.html

Another link to the file (with less clicking):
http://uneasysilence.com/archive/2006/12/8721/

If you want the less/ compressed version:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fp6ccIiZp1Y

Much Better...

Forget the steel island, I'm up for getting Count Dracula's Castle!. Anyone have some 90 million laying around?

Petoria

If you don't feel like paying any taxes, how about buying your personal island state?

Also, be sure to bring some ammunition so that you can defend yourself from those who dare seek to usurp your authority.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200701/s1823039.htm

Melding tradtion and technology for Christmas.

Ok, here's my standard Christmas card form letter (note the creative use of the word "tonic"):

Dear (Your Name Here):

We hope this finds you healthy and happy. We are all very well and relaxing after a busy summer and fall. We traveled to the Carolinas quite a bit this summer and built a giant play structure in the yard. I am fairly certain the structure can be seen from the moon.

In the fall Alex started kindergarten. He loves school, and this has been a great relief to us as we got to see our shy quiet little guy blossom into a rambunctious “school boy”. It has also made life easier in terms of getting him to do things that he does not care to do. Julia and I can frequently be heard saying things like “School boys use a fork to eat their peas.”

Sarah, 3, continues to be a very talkative and intelligent little girl. Her preschool teachers constantly tell us how smart and cooperative she is. We do not tell them that her favorite thing to say a home is “No way Jose!” Both of the kids are a lot of fun, and both are developing great imaginations and fine senses of humor.

Julia has become very busy with the schools as well. Sarah’s preschool program takes place at Alex’s elementary school so she has been staying at the school as a volunteer when Sarah is in class on Fridays. She has also been active on the PTA, and after a friendly critique of the lack of supervision on the playground, has gotten herself placed on the School Safety Task force.

I continue to manage the Computing Help Desk at Washington and Lee. I love my job. Spending my days working with enthusiastic young techies is a real tonic, and this summer I got a nice new office and Help Desk (both with windows (real windows, not Microsoft Windows)). I spend most of my free time working on the house, which will be fixed up by the time the kids go off to college.

We hope you have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year

My Illegable signature here.

Here's the obligatory webpage: http://home.wlu.edu/~jwhite/christmas2006.htm

Send me an email with your address if you want a real card.

Wii Have a problem

Well with the new wii out, it appears that people are having trouble holding on to the controller. Check out www.wiihaveaproblem.com for a list of things that you want to watch our for....Peter, you better watch out....

Happy Thanksgiving Everybody!

Now stop shopping!

So I have been trying to buy a freaking Nintendo Wii for the past few days. I actually showed up to Best Buy at 10:00 on the launch day to buy one. I show up all eager as a beaver at 10:00 in the morning on a weekend (yes, 10:00, as if I were in the freaking military) to own the newest latest and greatest in gaming only to find out they sold out at about 7:00 that morning.

And now, no one anywhere has a single Wii in stock. Amazon.com, Circuit City, Microcenter, you name it, its all sold out.

I went so far as to go to Conn's, Best Buy, Circuit City, and Fry's Electronics in Houston today, on Black Friday. Everyone is still sold out! The Wii has been out for 140 hours, 53 minutes, and 12 seconds and I still don't own one! By the time I can finally get one, its going to be about as outdated as Pong or one of Nancy Pelosi's suits.

I hate this consumer-oriented America! Every time I want something so bad that I'm willing to go to the store to actually buy it, its always sold out. Americans should not be allowed to shop, because it prevents me from buying what I really and truly need--a brand new Nintendo Wii.

I was even about to give in yesterday and buy a Xbox 360. Amazon.com had a deal where they were selling 1,000 of them for the ridiculously low price of $100. I swear, I was there right as the sale began. But as the time drew near, the Amazon.com homepage began to refresh really slowly... like about as slowly as W&L's Web Registration used to go... and in less than a minute, they had sold out of the $100 Xbox 360's. Man I was furious. So now, I ain't got no Nintendo Wii and I ain't got no $100 Xbox 360!

If only people would stop shopping... Sigh... When will we learn? Capitalism simply doesn't work.

This is why I no longer watch TV news...

http://thinkprogress.org/2006/11/15/larry-king-internet/

I thought the only Americans to never use the Internet were the freaking Amish. But Larry King? I swear, from now on I'm getting all of my news from the Onion.