Backup Man With A Backup Plan

“Don’t try to frighten us with your sorcerer’s ways, Lord Vader. Your sad devotion to that ancient religion has not helped you conjure up the stolen data tapes, or given you clairvoyance enough to find the Rebel’s hidden fort…” – Admiral Conan Antonio Motti

The Valve Store has actually hired a real IT Guy1 a couple months ago, so I am back to being just a back-up. And right now my only actual duties when the primary IT Guy is off is to change the backup tape every day in the server room2. Occasionally I get called upon hand out a cable or go lay hands on an ill PC, but the tape is really it. I remove the previous night’s tape and put in the current day’s, then take the used tape over to the main entrance door and hand it to the Security Guard (where later he gives it to a courier for off-site storage.) The highlight of this duty is to make up something different to say about the contents of the tape: “Just fast forward to the hour and 15 minute mark because that is where all the nudity is.” or “Don’t let Congress get a hold of this, its got all of Hillary’s emails on it.”

Unless you have been out west protesting an oil pipeline for the last 2 months or so you probably know there is a new Star Wars movie coming out. Well, over Thanksgiving week while the real IT Guy was on vacation I thought it would be cool to make a label for Friday’s tape referencing the supposed plot of Rouge One. That way when he pulls out the tape on Monday to swap them, he’d notice my little Easter Egg and get a smile. Trouble was, because I wouldn’t be in on that Friday, the guard was going to do the swapping and I didn’t want to take a chance he’d notice the different label, not get it, and call somebody because of the “error.” So I didn’t do it.

But last week I got a second chance. The IT Guy had to visit a sister plant for a project and would be gone from Tuesday through the end of the week. Friday afternoon I scoured the internet for a Galactic Empire logo and I also found out that the “Death Star” had a real name – Orbital Battle Station. I made a label just a touch smaller than, and used a glue stick to paste it over, the existing one on the tape.

Monday morning I heard the IT Guy get paged a half dozen times in the first hour by at least 4 different people, so I knew he was hopping around like a one-armed paper hanger. Around mid-morning I finally stopped in for a visit and asked him how the visit went and updated him on any IT problems that arose. I then asked if he had changed the tape yet. “Yep” “Did you notice anything different? Like the label?” “Yeah,” he replied, “I thought the storage site messed up somehow and just put the tape in the box and sent it off.” He totally missed my joke…sigh.

1. His name is Matt Somethingorother, but I like IT Guy better. And besides it gives him a bit of anonymity. The previous fellow’s real name was John Smith, but that’s got the anonymity built right in.
2. This is what the new IT Guy calls it because that is where our plant’s servers are. John and I always referred to it as the computer room because it was purpose built to hold the AS400 mini-mainframe we were supposed to get.

Jar of Toe Jam

Friday night was the MMC’s annual Christmas Party. I really kind of dislike giving a store bought gift for the gift exchange, so when I can, I like to make something sort of crafty. After last year’s Wrench on the Bench I really felt like there was no way to top that. So this year I dropped back and bought some stuff, admittedly non-standard stuff, and added a little crafty delivery system.

I didn’t get a cut of sales of the Blipshift shirt I inspired, but I did in fact get a $100 credit at the company store to use as I see fit. So on Cyber Monday when they offered these cool Cargyle Socks, I decided to spend some of that money. Because it was two pair I figured the second one would be my gift to give away. I also bought a set of the laser-cut ornaments and then I could use one of the four as decoration on the sock delivery package.

Initially Donna was going to bring a bottle of Blackberry Gold that we bought in Hendersonville over Thanksgiving from the Flat Rock Ciderworks. I was going to some how stuff the socks into a wine bottle so that we would both show up with identical shaped gift bags. This planned crashed for two reasons, first Donna opted to take the hard cider as her gift to the Valve Store’s Lady’s Christmas party the night before and second it turns out wine bottlenecks are too small to stuff a grown man’s sock through.

What you see above is Plan B. I was impressed with my effort, the person who ended up with it on Friday night was not. I was not too surprised by that though as the car club is stuffed full of non-car guys. Even if every person in the Club was there, I bet it would take less than one hand to count the number of folks out of the nearly fifty member/member families who would know the significance of the color pattern of the socks.

Making Action Figures Great Again

I’ve still got my Bernie Sanders action figure sitting on my desk and every Monday I have been writing one of Mr. Sander’s quotes on the back of a business card and taping it to his upraised left hand. Today a co-worker wandered by, checked out the quote and wondered out loud if their was a Trump action figure. Being the ever helpful person I am, I mentioned that the folks who made the Bernie figure had an April Fools joke about making one in the vein of Darth Vader. I said, “I wonder if they are going to make one of Trump now that he was elected?” “They started with a Hillary one in 2008 and when Barack Obama was elected they commissioned one of him” “Why not a Donald?”

So I went to the FCTRY site and sure as crap, they are going to do a Trump figure. They are calling it an Over Reaction Figure and taking pre-orders. Expected delivery of some time before the inauguration. Well…I just had to get one. I can replace the Bernie figure with the Donald and place some of his memorable tweets on a card in his hand.

Best Of

When I sent out my regular season wrap up to the owners of teams in the EZEFFL last night the first paragraph read:

The six title contenders have been selected leaving the rest outside looking in, but there is still plenty of fantasy left to be had for everyone. For the playoff teams there is a pot of gold (in diminishing increments) for the top three and for the Consolation Ladder there is the fabulous “Best of the Rest” trophy to the winning-est losing team.

And when I wrote the words “Best Of” I thought to myself that maybe I needed to start blogging here more, because if I didn’t I wouldn’t have anything to use for this December’s best post. That is when I looked over on the left and noticed that I didn’t have a Best Of for 2015 at all.

So I fixed both things tonight. The Best of 2015 is live and I created a second post for December. Not that this post will make the year’s best (at least I hope not.)

How Did We Do ????

About a week ago I got an email from my buddy Frank at CroftgateUSA. Today’s post title was the entirety of the body of that email. I wrote back to say that I hadn’t used either of the products yet. Last week it pretty much rained the whole time and this week is supposed to be a repeat, so on what was to be the only marginally nice weather day in a fortnight, Saturday I washed the Miata. I started in the usual way with a soapy bucket of water, a fresh water hose rinse and drying with a squeegee and several towels.

Then I broke out the special sauce and followed the instructions on the spray bottle: spray on surface, spray on microfiber towel, wipe surface with towel, then buff with separate microfiber towel. I will have to admit that the matte stripes do look cleaner and nicer. Whether that is placebo effect or an actual difference, I don’t know…anyway, we’ll see how it works. Especially how it handles beading water on paint.

I’m gathering the makings of the glove box light. The little LEDs are in hand and the switch is on its way. Figuring where to mount what and wiring it up, well those details are sketchy at the moment.

It is not all fun and games here at LOB HQ though, the CTBNL is afflicted with what every Miata of a certain age gets, slow power or hard to crank windows. Mazda in their effort to save weight or money or both sourced a plastic window bushing guide with a useful life of 8 years or 10,000 ups or downs. Now you can get these same guides on the aftermarket made from Delrin which will outlive the car. I’ve got a set on the way from Rspeed and might be just the rainy weekend project.

Stop The Madness

Subject: Christmas/Holiday Gift Giving At Work
To: Workgroup
Cc: Department Boss

Folks,

Every year I have been going around and asking (begging/cajoling) for some amount of money to pool together to buy the boss one big gift card. The decision of what store that card should be from is haggled over until a consensus is reached. I then go get the gift card from said place, stuff it in a Christmas card that we present to the boss at our annual holiday lunch at a local restaurant. At that same meal, the boss usually turns right around and hands out an individual gift card to each and every one of us, for about the same value as our individual donation to his card, in appreciation for our “hard” work during the year.

Well, this year I propose we stop the madness. Let’s avoid the whole senseless swapping ‘X’ amount for the same ‘X’ amount already. A free lunch on the company, a hardy handshake and a “thanks for everything” is all that any of us really want during this holiday season. I think it would be better for each of us to take that gift card money and drop it in the red kettle outside a grocery store or donate it to a charity that you feel is doing good work (or buy yourself Independence Day: Resurgence on BluRay.)

If someone else wants to take up the mantle of gathering money to pass along something up the food chain, please leave me out of it. I’m not a total Grinch, so if anyone, group or individual, wants to give another individual in the department a gift, by all means go for it. And after this, if someone still somehow feels the need to give me a gift, I will thank them profusely and promptly go out and buy a share in a goat in Zanzibar of equal value in their name.

Brian

P.S. Immediate Boss, please, don’t take this personally just because this is your first year as the boss and this is the year I’d like to opt out of the gift card swaperoo thing, it’s been festering for a few years now.

Moawr Gooder

Black Accent Stripes II

How do you make the already awesome stripes on your Miata more awesome? More stripes! You add some small black accent stripes to the big blue ones.

Black Accent Stripes