p>Listening to: Been Caught Stealing – Jane’s Addiction
Was very productive this morning. I got a bunch of smaller items cleared off my plate, and started to put a plan for dealing with re-adjusting our packages, support site, and escalation procedures worked out. I spoke with my boss, and I think we’ll be flushing our business case and starting over from scratch. All this after nine months of effort by my predecessors and colleagues. Ugh. Oh well, this way I can sleep at night.
Got a call from a contractor who wants to come to my house today at lunch. Nothing like adequate notice. Ah well, I want my doors replaced because they both irritate and scare the bejesus out of me, so off I go. Working from home for the aft is nice, anyway.
Da Ali G Show is coming to HBO. This was one of my favourite shows I saw when travelling in Europe, and I hope they bring it into Canada on Comedy or some such. Don’t expect any brain-stretching, as it is intelligent humour about as much as the Man Show is. My favourite episode was with Mohamed al-Fayed, who did a rap and dance number with Ali G. Was hilarious (really).
Spent a bit of time explaining what virtual hosting really is, and explaining why we couldn’t charge $500-800 for it. Funnily enough, our technology people think that providing a product using VMWare and IBM servers at $400.00/mth cost is ok. They should really check out what companies are charging for dedicated boxes, and what the competition is doing with “real#8221; virtual hosting services. We’ll be educating sales drones on Monday, apparently. I’m also supposed to be speaking to Microsloth to hear how they want to gouge me for licensing costs of their r33t new hosting technologies.
Repeat after me – spam controls only affect inbound mail. Our support group decided to tell and angry customer that their problems with mail was related to a minor change we made to the servers where DNS spoofer mail would get rejected. Now the customer is taking the “how dare you make changes without telling us first”. My real response is “buddy, you’re paying $35/month Canadian for web hosting and low-cost mail. You get what you pay for. Try telling that to the executive management who thinks Internet services should have the same reliability as the phone line. How difference can the complexities be, right? Fuckwads. Thankfully, we have decent management in the support groups, and I think we’ll be able to calm them down.
Coop, Kristina, and Axe came over for dinner. We had a great feast from Pe-nan Wok, my favourite Szechuan place outside of China. Spring Rolls, Crispy Ginger Beef, General Tao’s Chicken, Fried Noodles with Beef in a Black Bean Sauce, Diced Vegetables and Cashews in Hoisin Sauce, and some delicious Merlot Sorbet crafted by Kristina for dessert. Ahhh… gluttony. Everyone even brought beer, so I should have a lot in the house for when folks come over for the next little bit.
Following dinner we set Kristina up with her own TV and “Go”, and proceeded to play a little Halo. After a little fighting with DMZ settings on the home firewall and Xboxgw software, we linked up with Zulu and Storm in New York. We had zero lag, and had some great fragging fun. I took two of the four rounds, Coop took one, and Storm took one. Poor Zulu was having an off night and was everyone’s botch (although I was his in one round as we kept dying and re-spawning next to each other). Running over people with a Warthog is possibly one of the most satisfying ways of scoring a kill I’ve ever experienced. Oh, and playing split-screen on a 57″ HDTV makes the experience very enjoyable.
Coop and Kristina stayed a little longer than Axe, and we watched a bit of Oceans Eleven. Kris got a little sleepy to go with a little drunk, and the evening came to a nice fuzzy close. The only part of the evening that wasn’t great was when Kris confirmed I had a fruity bathroom. Message received, and it will be dealt with.