Planet TLLTS

Santa

Similarities Between Santa and Sysadmins

1. Santa is bearded, corpulent, and dresses funny.

2. When you ask Santa for something, the odds of receiving what you wanted are infinitesimal.

3. Santa seldom answers your mail.

4. When you ask Santa where he gets all the stuff he’s got, he says, “Elves make it for me.”

5. Santa doesn’t care about your deadlines.

6. Your parents ascribed supernatural powers to Santa, but did all the work themselves.

7. Nobody knows who Santa has to answer to for his actions.

8. Santa laughs entirely too much.

9. Santa thinks nothing of breaking into your $HOME.

10. Only a lunatic says bad things about Santa in his presence.

A few days ago my storage facility emailed me and asked me to take a quick customer survey. I obliged.

Dear Lincoln, Is there anything else that you would like to tell us about your experience with Extra Space Storage?

My understanding is that you folks just took over the storage space I have been using for some time now so I am not entirely sure most of my problems are related to your company. What I can say for sure is when I initially signed up there, the clerk was really a jerk to us and obviously had no idea what he was doing. He made several snide comments and it took me 4 phone calls to get our access code. I would have left then, but this was the closest facility to me that didn’t charge exorbitant prices. You have since fixed the price point and are charging me as much as possible. The last time I visited my non-climate controlled unit, I found all my possessions covered in leaves and cobwebs and other miscellaneous flora, as if there has been some squirrel or rat or other critter in there. I didn’t bother even reporting it since I had such a horrible experience with the worker I ran into when I first signed up. At this point, the moment I can find a cheaper facility I am gone to take my chances there. At almost $50 a month for a 5×5 non-climate controlled unit with a crappy door and some mongoose living in it unattended I feel as if I am truly getting ripped off every time the bill comes due. And someone needs to fix the exit keypad that you literally have to hold up while you punch the digits. Apparently someone ran it over and the resourceful staff there have it professionally fixed with an old bungee cord.

For quite sometime, as a little morale booster, we have been having Hawaiian Shirt Fridays at work. It’s fun and I, personally like Hawaiian shirts. The gaudier the better.

Well, recently, it has been decided that in lieu of the warmer weather, perhaps we should temporarily switch to Ugly Sweater Fridays instead. What you see included in this post is my first attempt. I asked my wife the day before to run to the thrift store and get me the ugliest sweater she could find.

She really deserves the credit here, although I did wear it proudly. I was *easily* given the title for the most hideous sweater. We’ll have to see what happens next week, but I believe this will be hard to beat unless someone finds one of those light-up Rudolph holiday sweaters.

Let’s see the pics of YOUR ugly sweaters!

One of the things I most hate in this world is when I am woken up for anything right before my alarm goes off. I guess this has to do with the horrible quality of sleep I get, which consequently leads to the minuscule quantity. For some reason, ever since my daughter was born I am an amazingly light sleeper. Any slight noise will not only wake me up, but keep me up. If my daughter coughs or sneezes in her room at night I wake right up. I digress…

This morning, maybe 5 minutes before the alarm went off, my cat decided that is would be a great idea to prance into my bedroom and start yowling, purring, chirping and scratching at the rug. Naturally, I thought she was going into heat again. She’s fixed, but whether you believe it or not, fixed cats can and do still go into heat, it’s just a lot quicker and, thankfully, quieter.

Well, I yelled at her to shut up. Threatened her immediate and imminent demise under my breath. My wife called her. Nothing would shut her up. Just as I summoned the rage to spring up and crush her to death, the dang alarm went off. So, I grumbled and trudged to the shower instead.

A few minutes later my wife showed up to explain exactly why the cat was so happy. Apparently, she had brought us a present to show off and she was really proud of it and would not shut up until she had an audience. She caught a mouse, was carrying it around and took great delight in bringing it to my wife for examination and praise.

My wife was good about it though. She managed to find some can from the garbage to scoop it into a bag with without calling for help or vomiting

Due to the overwhelming response of 4 people on the idea of doing a Linux System Administration show, I have decided to do it anyway. I know - glutton for punishment. I believe I will do this in a video format, or I will at least try. I need to work out just how to get that accomplished, but we’ll see what happens. What I do need from you 4 listeners/readers/watchers is a NAME and (hopefully RFQuerin is reading) a LOGO

As always, hit me up with suggestions, questions or concerns at linc dot fessenden at gmail dot com. Thanks!