Monthly Archives: June 2005
Holy Crap!
Just in case you hadn't scrolled down recently, you might wanna. Kristyland has a post with a record number of comments! Check it out, leave a comment, no big whoop.
06.29.05 11:13am(0 comments)
who knew?
I didn't know Bill Nye the Science guy was the heir to the walmart empire. Something about this plane crash seems a little karmic, but hey, that's just me.06.28.05 9:21am(1 comment)
I’ve got two tickets to shut the fuck up!
So here I am in my office, plugging away at getting the At Desk Faxing back in shape (manually editing every user account and sending off faxes in the queue, seriously tedius). Then, I hear the infamous "Check, Check 1 2, Check 1 2," about 8 gajillion times. Oh yeah, it's summer, and my office looks into the coutyard at the CBOT. Normally it's really chill and quite nice. There's some statues, a nice fountain, the ceres cafe has outdoor tables there, and of course, My friends the happy and stern art deco cows, of which I've mentioned in the past (they keep my company). To mix it up a bit in my little courtyard, on fridays in the afternoon they apparently bring in shitty bands. After the arduous task of figuring out whether or not the mic works (IT FUCKING WORKS SO SHUT THE FUCK UP!) started the the pretend blues rock band that thinks a little bit too much of itself but really should've stuck to karaoke and backyard gigs... At least now they're doing some covers of songs that I sorta like, even though they're botching it up pretty bad... a pretty bad rendition of "hungry for the good things," "ohio" and although I don't like this song, it was inspiration for the title, "two tickets to paradise." If I weren't waiting for Tom to come in around 5pm, I would so leave early and put myself out of this misery. Oh! They're finishing their first set! You mean they're coming back? *sigh*This could be the last time.. this could be the last time.. maybe the last time... I hope to hell so!
06.24.05 4:16pm(3 comments)
On a mission from Gad
I guess there's some guy who wants to recreate the blues brothers movie for real in Chicago. A little obsessive, but still cool. I just hope Im not on the street when he does that last big chase.06.24.05 7:10am(1 comment)
Another thing I gotta fit in this weekend…
In addition to Tom visiting, heading to a gay pride parade (I hope I can bring Sybil, she'd fit right in with her rainbow harness, leash, and doggy bling collar), having a cookout, going on a real adult date with Tom to Uno di Martino, and going to see Wicked, apparently I still have one more very important thing to put on the agenda.Before my freedoms of speech and expression are taken away from me, I better schedule a flag burning for this weekend. No, I don't hate America. No, I'm not a terrorist. Yes, I'm fully aware of what the flag stands for and that makes it that much more so important that I burn it in light of the singular right that our House feels the necessity to take away from every American. Oh yeah, Representatives, thanks for focusing on flag burning when we've got a war to end, mass poverty, health care issues, among other things to deal with. Thanks for doin' your job folks... really appreciate it.
Besides, the flag I'll buy to burn was probably made in a sweatshop in China...
06.23.05 7:14am(46 comments)
The tragedy! The HUMANITY!
My Grandparents computer, formerly my NEC versa sx laptop, finally went caput (or so we think), leaving my grandparents without their twice daily dose of kristyland among other things. Fortunately, I'll be seeing them over the July 4th weekend and can get them back in business then. Until that time, my grandparents are calling my mom to read kristyland to them. So expect a lot more posts :)hehehehehehehhh ;)
06.22.05 6:26pm(2 comments)
Celebrating the 500th post!
All this work has lead me to neglect a historic milsetone in Kristyland history, the 500th post. Unfortunately, it was just about a fark photoshop contest, but oh well. When I started this thing, a little before thanksgiving in 2001, I never thought that I would've had it around so long. Well, here it is, flourishing, having survived a redisign and various code-ey issues. Perhaps in honor of the 500th post, I'll switch to movable type, as Matt had suggested.I'd like to send a special thanks to Matt as he has been crucial in kristyland's history. He let me copy his journal code and hosted my website for free all of these years. Great guy, great friend. Thanks for everything Matt.
Another special thanks goes out to Tom, who is responsible for the awesome kristyland graphic and has done most of the photoshopping involved in getting my site to look so spiffy. Thanks Tom, we make such a great team!
Finally, a thank you to all the readers. Without you, there would be no kristyland, just a journal of some crazy geek chick. You're what makes this blog special *tear*.
06.22.05 10:09am(0 comments)
From my boss to the whole staff
Couldn't have said it better myself..."First I want to thank each and everyone of your for your patience. I know how terribly inconvenient it is for you when any part of the network is down and Kemps is the worst. Everyone has been very gracious; please dont think that goes un-noticed.
I want to give everyone an update on the activities of our MIS department over the past weekend. Starting on Friday evening our dynamic duo began the process of upgrading the GO portion of the LAFNET (our computer network) operating system from MS Windows NT 4.0 to MS Windows Server 2003 AND upgrading our email servers backend operation from Exchange 5.5 to Exchange 2003. This upgrade took our network from 1998 standard to state-of-the-art (we skipped the Server and Exchange 2000 upgrades). I do not want you to underestimate the magnitude of this activity. THIS IS HUGE.
Both Kristy and Albert have undertaken this migration with other networks, but as you have probably surmised our network presented some special challenges. The migration proceeded without a hitch on Friday and Saturday so Kristy gave Albert Fathers Day off (silly woman) at which point things stopped going well. First it was the exchange server and the 8 hours Kristy spent on the phone with Microsoft Help before that problem was solved (something about incompatible .dll files very geeky). She put in a 27 hours stint on that one. As the staff and the well-loved father arrived on Monday morning the Kemps problem emerged. After a few hours of trying everything Kristy decided it was Alberts turn to spend 8 hours on the phone with Microsoft Help, which is what it took for them to come up with an idea for a fix. Albert has spent all day today (Tuesday) implementing that fix while Kristy worked on getting at-desk-faxing working again. What was wrong with the Kemps server? Again, it was very geeky something to do with domain controllers, and zeros and ones on our network not lining up with Neptune and Pluto, and the server not being upgraded to Windows 2000.
The worst is over (she says hopefully). There is much more to come over the next couple of months. Each neighborhood will be getting a new server (already here) and with that a different structure that will allow you to continue working the when GO network is down. We are upgrading desktops that can be upgraded, to Windows XP and Microsoft Office 2003. With Office 2003 there will be a new version of Outlook you will love it.
Now a little treat: take a look at Outlook Web Access (OWA). edited for anonymity. You can do this from anywhere, in the office or outside the office.
My last comments are to Kristy and Albert. Thank you for the long frustrating weekend plus the last two days during which Murphys Law predominated. You are two of the most laid-back people I have ever worked with when chaos reigns."
What my boss didn't mention was that I should've called her over the weekend to give her updates, but I didn't want to bother her. Next time, I won't hold back and she'll get 'the real kristy' as opposed to the happy go lucky laid back kristy :) Man, I really love working here. People didn't freak out; they were supportive. My boss has been out of this world. I got flowers from the E.D. I'm getting tons of emails from staff thanking me for my hard work. Incredible. What a difference a functional office culture makes!
06.22.05 9:56am(1 comment)
Well color me surprised!
I came back from lunch to some beautiful flowers on my desk. Who gave me flowers? The executive director! Yeah! I was surprised too! He left a note that says "Hope this brightens your day, -Sheldon." How cool is that! This, along with users that don't flip out with a network outage, and having accomplished an nt4 to 2003 upgrade over the weekend is going to be something that I can really get used to!06.21.05 12:45pm(0 comments)
27 hour shift…
After working an all nighter, something I haven't done since the Sky Bank Angel Tree incident, one really feels very much like this. Now, I'm going to go unfuse my contacts from my eyeballs and try to get a little nap before Sybil goes back to the vet for her checkup. I'm very glad that's over with and will tell you the details regarding the upgrade later on.06.20.05 1:13pm(1 comment)