Author: weed

All,

Last week, my wife, my son, & I went to the Outer Banks of N.C. for vacation. 6 hours from home, so the ride sucks, but the area is awesome!

Got there on Saturday, driving through the tail end of Charlie. Charlie was the hurricane, which is nothing but a deep low pressure system. Low pressure is important to this story.

So Sunday night/Monday morn at 2:00 AM, my wife tells me, “Go get your sister, my water just broke.” A few notes about this statement:

1) My sister is an OB/GYN nurse practitioner, that’s why we were getting here 2) My wife was only 33 1/2 weeks along, which is a tad bit early 3) We were 6 hours away from home, which is a LONG way once the membranes have ruptured

So we saddle up and head to the hospital at the Outer Banks. We get in there only to find our they don’t have the facilities to handle preemies, so they’re shipping us to Norfolk.

And hour and a half later, via Ambulance, we’re in Norfolk General Hospital. And then, at 10:12 AM on 8/16, little Gabriel Michael was born.

When your baby is full term, it’s still a long, long wait from when he’s born until you hear that first cry. When your baby’s early, which means his lungs are probably still immature, and it takes 30 seconds before you hear that cry, it a freakin lifetime.

But he did fine, he weighed 5lbs 7 oz and was 17 3/4 inches long. He’s due to be discharged on Wednesday, so the wonderful Norfolk stay will FINALLY be over and he’ll be home.

I am so curious to see how the 2-year-old handles him.

But that’s the story of the bestest sea-shell you could bring home from the beach!!!

My $.02 (1 cent per kid now) Weed

P.S. Justin, Alien Resurrection was HORRIBLE. Winona Ryder in that film is like putting Keanu Reeves in Tim Robbins’ role in Shawshank. A fish out of water. She needs to be in deep, philosophical chick flicks.

EDIT by matthew: fixed formatting.

Somedays IT is fun…

I come into work, and my boss is on me immediately: “I can’t log in, I get an error message that the system time and the domain time is not synchronized”. But I push him off, because somehow someone inside the LAN has contracte the Mydoom virus and is sending out emails out the wazoo.

Then I get an email from an off-site employee who is here for the week asking me if the Mydoom emails are “really” from us IT guys. Also, she happens to ask if we have anti-virus software BECAUSE SHE HAS NONE ON HER LAPTOP! Clue #1 on where to look for the virus. Sure enough, her unprotected laptop has been have relations with a nasty part of the internet…

So I go and remove the virus from her computer, install the corporate Symantec AV, check the registry and other startup spots, and run ad-aware just to be sure. (Mydoom did a nasty because the virus executable ‘services.exe’ shares a name with an actual Windows system service, so if you try to kill it, Windows won’t let you. If you try to delete the startup entry in the registry, the executable puts in right back in. So you have to start up in Safe Mode, THEN delete the registry entry. Tricky…)

She’s good now, so I turn to my boss’s time problems. I ask him if the time is correct and he says yes. I try to log in as admin and I get the error message. I log into the computer domain and check the time. Looks good, time zone’s correct, but wait! It’s 10:12 on his computer, as it’s 10:12 on the server. But it’s daylight, so the 10:12 PM!!!! on his computer MIGHT be a little off. I set it back to ante-meridian, and all is well.

Then I get a call from another manager who got one of the mydoom emails telling me Symantec AV won’t let him open the attachment. Somehow, I manage to politely tell him we IT guys didn’t send the email, but that it’s a virus (mind you, we’ve sent 80 million emails out warning the masses).

I know we need to strip out attachments from our email and scan them before they get to the users, but the sendmail guru here is overworked, so I get to deal with the, uhm, “computer ignorant” sometimes, and I just have to shake my head…

My $.02 vent Weed

Here’s a little lightness and levity admist some of the turmoil of the board recently.

When I was young, my sister and brother-in-law used to challenge ourselves to come up with silly rhymes in this format:

I love you, I love you I love you so well If I had a peanut I’d give you the shell

-Or-

I love you, I love you My love for you so real If I had a banana I’d give you the peel

Silly little things, but we used to have so much fun coming up with them

As a fun aside, what can you come up with? Is doesn’t necessarily have to be food related, but the twist about loving so much to give something people don’t like, that was the kicker.

One more to get you started:

I love you, I love you My love for you runs deep If I had a chance I’d give you the creeps

My $.02 Weed

As I was reading the blog on the old, old Wayward Sun tapes, I figured it would be nice for Matt to know how I came to be a part of the Barnson.org family 🙂

Back in the day (fall ’91), I embarked on a journey to get a degree at UMBC. My degree was to be in intramural sports, however, due to a communications error, UMBC thought I was going for a Mathematics degree. The resulting snafu added 3 years to my undergraduate career.

So my freshman year, I meet this tall dude with a definite Jewish nose who I immediately disliked. He was loud and arrogant, had no respect for anyone who didn’t like the Redskins or Capitals, and carried his bass guitar around everywhere.

(Side note: All the parents out there familiar with The Wiggles…doesn’t Sam remind you of Murray Wiggle?)

However, this fellow and I had a common interest in sports, and we spent many a classtime battling over Sega NHL 91. Next thing, we’re playing hockey together, and we become friends. I remember a road trip to Towson with young Samuel to watch some high school girl in a marching band competition. Her name was Jennifer something or other and she was from Canoctin (sp?)…

So our Junior years (cronologically, not necessarily in credit years ;), we move up to the UMBC apartments with Sam’s friend Ben and some dude Mike. So we had 3 Jewish dudes and the poor Catholic boy (me) living together. I never managed to eat mahtza (sp?) ball soup that year…

Now Wayward Sun is playing gigs and having a good time. I tag along when I can ( apparently taking Justin’s place, although I was the short, stocky groupie ). Ben, Sam & I live together the next year as well, replacing Mike with Jason Smith, one of the manliest men ever to walk the planet. Captain of the rugby team, Special Forces medic, going for his masters in Mechanical Eng, and quite the ladies man. You can ask Sam about the J/K’s snafu one day. (I want my two dollars!!!) Alas, J/Ks is no more…

Not to brag, but that year we pulled off the best on-campus party UMBC has ever seen. It was the first weekend in February, it was snowing, so we threw a beach party. Put Tide on the walls and hung black lights (Try it). Had a mixed drink bar and a frozen drink bar. Put a bowl of Coppertone in front of a fan to get the aroma correct. We had one of Jason’s rugby friends as a bouncer. He was 5’9″, 350+, and in nothing but a grass skirt. Jimmy, Bob, and the Beach Boys were on the stereo.

We had a line to get into our apartment. We made over $240 that night, and only got wrote up for a fire code violation. All I remember is Jason’s brother trying to pay for drinks with a Ski Liberty card.

So after that year, Sam graduated, but we stayed friends. I still claim that “Wrong Words” is by far the best WS song ever, for it’s simplicity. Plus, Ws would have made it big if they would have incorporated a rapper into the mix, but they were down with that 😉

I actually found Barnson.org googling Wayward Sun, and found some of the old music here.

That’s how I became part of the Barnson Bunch! My $.02 Weed

So at my company of about 100 people, we implemented a new anti-SPAM email policy today. Basically, we created a whitelist of people allowed to email us. If you’re not on the whitelist, you get a notification directing you to a web page where you can add yourself to the whitelist.

The whitelist is working fine, but the president of our company got confused, received an email with a virus attachment, thought the attachment was another email message, and opened it.

Now my phone is ringing off the hook because everyone is getting emails with viruses attached to them. I go to the pres’ office, kill the virus process, run the removal tool, check everything out, and it’s all good.

My boss asks me why we don’t just strip out executable attachments in emails anyway. We tell him we were going to implement that with the whitelist, but he pulled us off before we could to work on a urgent-need project. He says, “Oh”

So then, I get an email from a guy at one of our remote offices stating that he received an email from another employee that has a .pif attachment, but he couldn’t get the attachment, so could I help him get the attachment? This is after I’ve sent a gazillion emails about how spammers can spoof the From: address, so you never know who it’s really from. And I’ve sent a gazillion and one emails about never opening .pif, .scr, .exe, .vbs., .com, etc files because they’re executables and can harm your system.

And you know what’s wierd…99% of the viruses out there are relatively harmless. They may clog up email, but they don’t do any real damage. You know how easy it would be to write a virus that really messes up a computer? Not hard at all. And that’s the scary thing…

So I recently started listening to Don & Mike. For those of you from Washington, I know you may be wondering “Where has he BEEN?” Remember, I’m from nor-eastern Maryland and we didn’t get D&M until 105.7 started carrying them out of Baltimore. If you’ve been listening to talk radio at all, then you’ll probably know that the FCC cracked down on Viacom/Infinity radio stations after the Janet Jackson incident. D&M/Stern/The Junkies all were affected. No bad language, no sexual humor, pretty much back to the 60s.

Not that this is bad, but I’m kinda torn. Don & Mike were hilarious, but I couldn’t listen to them with my kid in the car. Now my kid can listen (kinda), but they aren’t as funny anymore.

My question is this: do we want (and need) the FCC (or government) to be the cops here? It seems that every generation has pushed the limit a little further than the one before. Now Bush wants to be the one who “restores” the morals to society?

Regardless of whether you condone same-sex marriages, that’s a religous choice. What possibly does it have to do with givernment? Bush is playing to his conservation base by pushing this amendment. Who is he (or the government) to say if that’s right or wrong. Murder, theft, rape, these all have clearly defined victims. Gay marriage & Janet Jackson’s breast, who’s the victim here? I can raise my kid to have the morals I believe in, I don’t need George Bush to tell me what they should be.

My $.02 Weed

UPDATE by matthew: There’s a sequel to this by Justin, and yet another update on the topic in October 2004 by Sammy G.

Why is baseball such a collection of idiots?

I don’t mean the players, but the owners and the players union? C’mon! How hard is it to look at your league (MLB) and see declining attendance and ratings, and then to look at another league (NFL) and see the exact opposite, and figure out that the main reason is that 95% of the teams are out the playoff race by the end of July?

It’s great in the NFL now, because I know that my Ravens are going to challenge for the playoffs at least once every 3-5 years. Every team has a shot now. The Bengals look good for the coming year, so now maybe even the Cardinals may make a run.

But my poor Orioles, they make some good free agents signings this year (Tejada, Javy Lopez) and fall even farther behind the evil empire. How can this be good to anyone outside the major markets? Granted, you might get a team like the Marlins who put together a good year and make a run, but they’ll be the anomaly.

Who won the year before them? The Angels. Where are they now?

The year before that? The Diamondbacks. Where have they been?

(I love the fact that since Mike Mussina deserted us for the evil empire, he hasn’t won that ring yet. HAHAHAHA!!!)

So, the players union states that this is good for baseball and the players, to have the rich get richer. How? It’s almost like a whole other level to MLB, where if you’re good, you make the majors, but if you”re great, you make the evil empire!

Why not have the All-Stars from the AL & NL play the evil empire at the All-Star break? That would be as fair!

I’m done ranting. MLB should get a clue and share revenue and balance things out. Explore a salary cap. Learn from the success of the NFL.

My $.02 Steve

So I was listening to 98 Rock this morning, and they were talking about pets and the silly/stupid/amazing things they do. Which harkened me back to my youth and one of the dumbest dogs ever to roam this earth.

Brandy was a male cocker spaniel, pure bred I believe. My sister and brother-in-law had some sort of papers, and the dog’s full name was something like Master Jason Brandy Boyd, so you get the picture. NOT that my sister’s family was hoity-toity, but that the dog came from that kind of background. As you’ll see, he shoulda had a DuPont thrown in there too…

My sister has a hardwood hallway, with a door at the end of it. I remember having hours (and I do mean HOURS) of entertainment when we would thrown Brandy a ball down the hallway. He would get up to speed, chasing the ball, only to have it bounce, hit the door, and go back over his head. Brandy, however, would keep going, according to Newton’s laws and the lack of friction on hardwood, and slide into the closed door at the end of the hallway. Then he would get up, retrieve the ball, bring it to us, and then beg to do it again. And again. And again.

It went like this:

run/scrape – bounce – slide – BANG – run/scrape – drool – BARK BARK BARK

So that may have been our fault, for continuing to play along with the dog’s desire to crash into doors…buit this one was all him.

I was out in a field at home, tossing balls up and hitting fly balls to my nephew Tim(Brandy’s brother, if you will). Brnady was there, and I’d hit the ball and he’d start to chase it, then as Tim would throw it back he’d chanse it then, and we’d repeat the process. I musta repeated the process 25-50 times, and each time, Brandy would chase out and chase back.

So then, for some unknown reason, he gets “smart”. I toss the ball up, and he decides to head it off at the pass, so he jumps up to catch the ball as it falls!, somehow neglecting to realize the bat rapidly approaching his skull. I was watching the ball the whole time, and therefore didn’t see poor Brandy until my bat and his skull collided. And I clocked him! Poor dog, luckily I was only 13 or 14 at the time and didn’t have much bat speed. He whimpered and whined for a little bit, walked it off, and seemed otherwise okay, but he didn’t chase any more balls that day.

There were other events, I think he was hit by three or four cars in his day, and each time he’d come home with cuts/bruises/limps, but he’d heal and be the same ole Brandy.

Until I allowed him to commit suicide.

My sister’s house had a deck, which they had tore down to build a new one. By this time, Brandy was 10, and the injuries had taken their toll. He was blind, with a limp, and there was debate whether or not to have him put down. The main reason against was my niece and nephew’s vehement protests, but it would have been soon.

Anyway, poor Brandy is blind, and bumping into things all the time. I was to the sliding glass door where the deck used to be, to yell out a question to my brother-in-law. Only opened the door wide enough to stick my head out. This blind dog, somehow, manages to walk right through the 1 foot wide gap now there, and stpes onto the deck.

Which is no longer there.

I have had a lucky life, I haven’t seen much tragedy, but the Fall Of Brandy will be one I remember my whole life. He did a half rotation as he fell, landing on his back, which I believe broke on impact. He died about 5 minutes later.

Me & my bro-in-law buried him, amid many tears from the family. My family had told me over and over that it was for the best, which is true, but I can still see him falling.

Of course, my family has the sick sense of humor that my aunt came home one day, about 10 years later, with a t-shirt with Brandy’s picture on the front and on the back, it says:

“Who Let The Dog Out?”

Sorry about the long, pointless post, but hopefully you’ll see the humor in this story, as the dog WAS well loved, and just made some bad decisions.

So I moved out of the city (Perryville, MD, pop 2000) to the country (Rock Run Road, 2 acres, only house on my “street”). No more using the townhouse mailbox cluster, now I had to dig a hole, sink a post, and have a good ‘ole American mailbox.

We were in a hurry to get everything finished while building the house, so when my builder told me I needed a mailbox set, I told him I’d do it myself. Having been told stories about evil mailbox marauders, I purchased a cheapy plastic one for about $5 at Home Depot, mounted it on a 4×4 wood post, and voila!!! I am a direct descendant of the Pony Express.

Until Saturday night, when it was destroyed…

The post is still standing, and the bottom of the mailbox is still attached to the post, but the rest of the mailbox is in tatters.

I know I was told it would happen, and I know I purchased a cheap mailbox to offset the replacement costs, but I was still pretty peeved about it. They destroyed my mailbox! They attacked me!!!

Now, being an industrious American, I figured now that I have time, I’d make me a iron-reinforced stone mailbox enclosure that could double as my bomb-shelter when they launch the big ones….but, my bro-in-law, who works for the Post Office, tells me that’s illegal. Something about having to give way to a car that might hit it, instead of splitting the car in two.

What’s THAT about? I can’t make my property resist destruction, in the case that someone who can’t drive might hit it??? Or I guess I should wait for the police officers to catch them? No thanks, I’d rather they be out prosecuting the real criminals, but please allow me to defend my property! I guess I COULD mount a motion activated video camera to get license tag numbers of every car that goes by…I’ll see if I can get a grant from MDOT for that.

You know, America has become the home of “take no risks because some idiot will mess up and then sue you”. When did bad luck or stupidity become the right of eveyone to profit from?

My $.02 Weed