Category Archives: Stories

Silliness, Stories

Watering the Deer

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(As a side note, or, at very least, a quick digression, after writing that title, it occurs to me to wonder whether Dave might think “watering the deer” is some sort of euphemism.)

After losing most of last year’s tomato crop to deer, I’ve been looking into ways to discourage the critters from coming into my yard. It turns out the most obvious approach – a fence – isn’t terribly effective. Anything less than eight feet high and the deer will jump right over it. And who wants an eight foot fence blocking their view? (It’s not a great view, but it certainly beats the parking lot views I’ve had at various apartments.)

One solution is a liquid deer repellent that you spray on your plants at grazing height. There are a few catches though. For starters, you have to reapply the stuff every time it rains. You have to apply it consistently across all the plants or else the untreated vegetation will mask the taste of the treated plants. And, of course, the way this stuff works is it makes the plants taste bad; so you don’t want to get any of it on the stuff you plan to eat.

One of the possibilities I ran across is a motion-activated sprinkler. The idea is that a deer wandering into the yard will trigger the sprinkler and get pelted with a few cups of cold water. This startles the deer and it goes running. Once a deer is scared out of an area, it’s not likely to come back. (By some accounts, these devices are also effective at deterring one’s neighbors from stealing tomatoes; though I haven’t had that particular problem.)

Mom and Dad gave me such a sprinkler back in February. I’m sure it’s not the most requested item on most people’s birthday lists, but most of the “toys” on my wish list (e.g. a decent point-and-shoot camera) were a bit on the pricey side, so this seemed like a reasonable alternative.

I came home on Wednesday to find a deer standing in my front yard. The deer stood its ground as I backed the car into the driveway, and didn’t even seem to take any particular notice as I got out and closed the car door behind me. It didn’t seem perturbed by anything until I started running toward it, yelling. (Hopefully the neighbors had their windows closed, otherwise they may be wondering about me a bit more than usual.

Sensing that this might be a good time to start trying to scare the deer away, I spent some time on Sunday afternoon getting the sprinkler set up.

One of the steps for setting up the sprinkler is to test it by standing behind the sprinkler and trigger the motion sensor by waving a hand in front of it. One detail I wasn’t entirely clear on though was how to set the sprinkler head’s range of motion. I’d set it to spray the area of the garden, but when I waved my hand in front of the sensor, first it spun to the right and sprayed me from that side. An instant later, it spun nearly 360 degrees and sprayed me again. At that point it paused for eight seconds before looking for more deer.

My next-door neighbors were out working in their garden and must have thought I’d lost my mind. The entire incident had taken place too quickly for them to have seen it, but at that point I started laughing uncontrollably. I’m not sure whether I stood up too quickly or perhaps just lost my balance, but either way the world went all wibbly-wobbly and I fell into the flower bed. I got up a moment later; unscathed, but still laughing manically.

My insomnia kicked in on Sunday evening, preventing me from getting more than a few moments sleep. But it was worth it. Around 4:30 I heard the sprinkler activate as the first deer got soaked.

Stories, Work

Nervous

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I’ve been a little stressed out at work this week. We have a new software release going out this week and it represents a couple major firsts for me.

First, this is first project where I was the lead developer. The quality of my work is going to be on display in entirely new ways.

Second, over the past 20 years, pretty much everything I’ve worked on has only been seen by a handful of people.

What’s been gnawing at me has been the realization that the web site we’re updating this week routinely has more than 2 million page views per month.

I mentioned this to one of my co-workers this afternoon. He replied, “What do you mean 2 million? It’s more than 24 million.”

This was soon followed by the rather Hagrid-like admission, “I probably shouldn’t have told you that.”

No, that’s OK. Just so there’s no pressure or anything…

Stories, Work

Questionable Judgement.

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As I’ve mentioned, my co-workers have prohibited me from making jokes during the last few weeks before a software release. We’re in one of those joke-free periods right now in fact.

Between business meetings and taking some time off, the Chief’s been out of the office a few times over the past month. When that happens, he generally leaves Olive in charge. Olive in turn has been threatening to leave me in charge if she and the Chief were both out at the same time.
My response to this threat has been to warn her against it. It’s just a bad idea and under no circumstances should she leave me in charge.

The Chief’s been out for the past three days.

Olive called in sick on Tuesday.

I ended up in charge.

When Olive came back on Wednesday, the big software release we’ve been working on had been pushed back for at least a week.

I certainly hope she has learned a lesson from this mistake.

Silliness, Stories

Jokes Come True

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There’s a policy at my office that I’m not allowed to make jokes for the final few weeks before a software release. That’s because my jokes have a history of unexpectedly coming true.

The most famous example of this came about a year and a half ago during a deployment planning meeting. When we got to contingencies, I half seriously asked something about the plan in case there was a problem in the server room, for example, somebody tripping over the power cord.
The IT manager laughed and said whoever it was would have to be extremely clumsy since there were six different power cords involved.
That evening there was a network outage involving the electrical system. It took a day and a half to get everything back in order.

So I’m not allowed to make jokes any more.

I’m not sure if this is a curse or a super power, but I just grin and laugh whenever the project manager feels the need to bring up the topic (at least once per release). And up until recently, I thought I was alone in bearing this burden.

There’s been a joke floating around in email for at least 10 years (and probably longer in other forms) which takes the form of a letter from home written to a young man who has left hillbilly country. The letter, from a relative, contains a number of the “usual” hillbilly gags such as “I know you can’t read very fast, so I’m writing this very slowly.”
It ends with the sad tale of a group of the young man’s friends who drowned when the pickup they were riding in went off the road into a lake. The letter explains that the driver was able to get out, so he survived, but everyone riding in the back drowned because they couldn’t get the tailgate down.

It sounds like just another joke taking a shot at “ignorant hillbillies,” but I’ve come to believe that whoever originated the joke may possibly share my gift/curse for having jokes come true.

This evening I read the account of a Florida woman who had to call 911 from her cell phone because she was trapped in the car after the battery died and the power locks stopped working.

I fear for our civilization.

Assorted Ramblings, Rants, Stories, Tech

First Impressions: Android

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I’ve been a Sprint customer for the past eight years, but over the course of my most recent contract, I encountered a number of customer service issues:

  • Unable to block calls from unknown numbers.
  • Being charged for text message spam.
  • Sprint deciding to wipe out all user accounts on their web site.
  • Sprint store employees unable to sell replacement batteries.

When I wrote to the head of customer service, Sprint’s response to everything was best summed up as “We don’t do that.” (Amusingly, on one of my phone calls to customer service, the person I spoke to admitted that she doesn’t use Sprint at home.)

When my contract expired in December, Sprint offered me a $50 rebate if I’d sign on for another two years. What they didn’t offer was an apology. That’s too bad, because they certainly are sorry.

So now that I’m footloose and contract-free, I started looking around at some of my other options. I have some misgivings about T-Mobile, and a few more about Google, but the Android Operating System has all sorts of Geek appeal. (Regardless of whether you actually do it, the notion of being able to being able to program your phone is kind of cool.)

I’ve certainly heard plenty of good things about the phone. A co-worker has been raving about his since the week after they came out, and when I bumped into her at Farpoint, Katie started evangelizing about the G-1.
So, I decided to give it a try. I ended up buying the phone directly from T-Mobile and arrived home on Thursday to find a note from UPS waiting for me, saying a signature was required. I finally got the phone late Friday evening when I went to the UPS pickup location.

When you first turn the phone on, it prompts you to either login to an existing Google account, or create a new one. So I entered my information and clicked the “Sign-in” button. The login process ended with a message telling me that the phone couldn’t log in. It might be a temporary problem, or it might be that the SIM card hadn’t been set up correctly. After twelve hours later, I’ve ruled out the idea of it being a temporary glitch.
The first call to T-Mobile’s “Customer Care” number (Whatever happened to calling it “Customer Service”?) didn’t go so well. First I got a bad connection. Next, the representative kept telling me how I could find out the new phone number by entering a code (Gee, if only I could get the phone set up, I could try that!), and then I got cut off.

The second call was a bit more productive. It turns out that when I ordered the phone, the sales person forgot to sign me up with the required data plan. (Buying the G-1 phone absolutely requires you to buy a data plan, but somehow the sales person managed to skip that step.)
I’m set up with data service now, but the Customer Care rep told me it may take anywhere from a couple hours to a couple days before the service starts working. (If it ends up at the “couple days” end of the scale, I’ll be returning the phone. I’m already several days into the trial period without being able to try it.)

So my first impression of the G-1 Android phone is this: It’s a brick. I’d been hoping to write about how well it was working, maybe even post something via the phone. (Before it died, I would occasionally post via my PDA.) Instead, I’ll have to settle for letting Katie write about her phone in the comments.

Most likely the problems I’m having are because somebody turned off the satellites.

Stories

Catching the Bus

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Saturday was a very full day. Working at the Gaithersburg St. Patrick’s Parade in the morning, going down to the Writer’s Center in Bethesda for an open house in the afternoon, and then going out to dance at Glen Echo in the evening. (And somewhere in between, taking a nap; that was one very long day!) On the way out for the evening’s activities, I made a detour to buy gasoline and on my way back to the main road, found myself stuck waiting first at a railroad crossing, and later, behind a bus.
There was a light drizzle falling and when I first saw the bus, I was bemused that the route number seemed to spell out a word. I couldn’t quite make out the numbers, but it looked a bit like “HE7A.” How they come up with the combination of letters and numbers that makes up a route number is a mystery to me, so I didn’t pay much attention.

After going through an intersection, I started paying a bit more attention to the bus. That’s because I had noticed the running lights were blinking in a way that would get your attention and instead of “HE7A”, the route number instead said, “HELP!”

Aside from it being the first convenient vehicle, I can’t imagine why someone would hijack a bus. But as soon as it sunk in what was going on, I grabbed my cell phone and called 911. I told the dispatcher what I was looking at and where we were. It turned out they already knew about the bus, but didn’t know which one it was (this area has several gazillion buses after all). I was able to give the dispatcher the bus’ ID number and an update on where it was turning.

Going on the idea that the bus really had been hijacked, following it probably wasn’t the safest thing to do; but there were no signs of police cars whizzing into the area and I thought it might be helpful if someone could give them an update on where it had gone. (Buses are big and difficult to hide, but as noted above, this area does have several gazillion of them.)

The last I saw of the bus, it had pulled over to the side of the road. While I was trying to go around, the driver hopped out, looked up at the route number display, got back in, turned it off, and came back out to make sure it was off. My best guess is that he’d been driving around for the last couple of miles, completely unaware that he’d bumped the “I’ve been hijacked” button.

It had never occurred to me before that a bus might be equipped with a panic button like that. It does kind of make sense though. And where you have panic buttons, you undoubtedly also have the occasional incident where the button gets pushed by mistake. But that’s a lot better than the alternative of having an actual emergency.

It certainly made a memorable start to my evening.

Silliness, Stories, Work

What Did You Do To Deserve This?

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The desk calendar I use at work occasionally includes some “interesting” quotations. One recent example – from no less a personage than Genghis Kahn – left me laughing:

I am the punishment of God… If you had not committed great sins, God would not have sent a punishment like me upon you.

I admit to being something of a wiseguy, so I showed this quotation to my co-worker Olive and asked, “Does this remind you of anyone you know?”
She laughed and replied, “Yes it does. But I’m an atheist.”

Olive paused for a moment and then added, “Oh. Do you think maybe that’s what I’m being punished for?”

Fandom, Stories

Anticipation

For the sixth year in a row, I’m the webmaster for the Shore Leave Science Fiction convention. Clearly this proves I’m insane, but insanity can be a good thing.

A couple weeks ago I got the word from Kett (the person responsible for booking the actors) that there would be a bunch of actors to announce this past weekend and could I possibly put up a message saying that a guest announcement was pending. So I put a message on the home page, along with a set of photos of a plush bunny labeled “Guest to be Announced Soon!” The guest names, photos and biographies came in over the next several days.

Kett called me on Sunday so we could doublecheck that everything was ready to go with the announcement. During the conversation, she mentioned that the people who participate on the GateWorld message board (a Star Gate fan site) loved the bunny photos and had been digging into the web site, trying to find clues about who the guests might be and checking for updates on a very regular basis (I’d noticed a spike in traffic as soon as the announcement went up).

At that point, all I needed was the official “Go Ahead” from the convention chairs. In the meantime, I couldn’t help myself. I added a message on the home page saying, “Hello GateWorlders! The update is nearly here, just making sure we chase off all the wraiths first.” (Wraiths being the villains, or in this case, an analog for last minute glitches – nothing like having problems come up during a high-profile update.)
I took a look at GateWorld site and found the thread where they were chatting about Shore Leave. Kett wasn’t fooling about their level of activity.

6:28 PM EST: I posted the first “Hello GateWorld” message on the home page.
6:31 PM: The first GateWorlder reported that a new message had appeared.
8:08 PM: I updated the message to say “The update is nearly here, we’re dialing the chevrons now.” (“Dialing the chevrons” being something analogous to dialing a phone number people on the show do when they’re programming the stargate with a destination.)
8:11 PM: The update was noticed!
8:15 PM: A final message, “Chevrons locked. Update in progress.” (The “phone call” was connected, the exploration team can now walk through to another planet.)
8:17 PM: The message was noticed almost immediately and people started hitting the web site in earnest, trying to be the first to see the update.
The home page is always the last thing I update. That way nobody sees a guest announcement, until all the details are visible. (Even with my high speed connection, updates still take a few moments.)
8:22 PM: They even read The News Page! Nobody ever reads the news page! It doesn’t contain nearly as many details as the other pages.
8:24 PM: And the fans go wild….

Judging by the comments on the GateWorld site, some of those folks probably think I’m a bit cruel.

Assorted Ramblings, Stories

Starting Off With A Bang!

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My wish for one and all is that so far your year has been better than mine, and that the rest of it be at least as good as I expect mine to be. And in the immortal words of Dave Barry, I swear, I am not making any of this up.
Today is January 6th. It is the sixth day of 2009. So far this year, I have…

  • …snapped the key off in the lock (with me on the wrong side of the door) at 2 AM New Year’s Day.
  • …replaced a broken thermostat.
  • …woken up shivering the following morning because the furnace was also having problems.
  • …stayed the following night with friends because the house was still too cold.
  • …had my Christmas cold return.
  • …spent two hours sitting at the car dealership only to learn that they’re not sure whether they’ve fixed the problem.
  • …had the problem with the furnace turn out to be easy to fix, except they don’t have the part in stock!

My take on all of this is that I’m getting the entire year’s worth of crap out of the way at the very beginning. Once I get past this, look out! The rest of this year is going to be fantastic!!!!!
Assuming, of course, that I survive January.

Assorted Ramblings, Stories

Happy New Year!

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I miss my niece Evangaline.
Don’t get me wrong, I love all of my nieces and nephews very much, but in the wee hours of this morning, it was Evangline who was foremost in my thoughts.
My New Year’s Eve activities went pretty much according to plan, attending a dance where the quite awesome Tom Cunningham Orchestra was performing. At the stroke of midnight, I was dancing with a complete stranger who happened to agree with me that it would be a shame to let a perfectly good dance song go to waste. The balloons dropped, the band switched to Auld Lang Syne, and everything was good.
The dance ended shortly after 1:00AM when the band played an encore number on the condition that everyone take home some of the left over cider. Another complete stranger (I think her name was “Marta” — they kind of run together after a while) agreed with me that we shouldn’t let this song go to waste either and that was the perfect ending to my evening at the Spanish Ballroom.
I pulled into the driveway about 1:45, gathered up my stuff and went to open the door. That’s about when Evangline entered my thoughts. As I put the key into the deadbolt, it snapped off at the base.
While I waited for the locksmith to arrive, I kept thinking about the story of how at age eight Evangline picked a lock at her school using no tools other than her father’s driver’s license.
Some people complain that there’s never a cop around when you need one. I’ve rarely had that problem. The only time I urgently needed a police officer (after a hit and run 12 years ago), I found several of them a block away at the 7-11. But if Evangline had been visiting this week, she could have saved me $200 and most of an hour.
So aside from that little glitch, my 2009 is off to a good start. And I’m taking the view that the problem with the broken key simply means I’m getting all the problems out of the way up front. Nothing but up from here, y’know?
May 2009 be the best year of your life so far with the best yet to come.
So what did you do on New Year’s Eve?