Time for some ranting!
Anyone who ever worked in IT support can attest to this fact: Users lie. Users lie like it's going out of style, and then lie about lying to you. Perfect example: User calls the helpdesk, says their PC won't turn on. What's troubleshooting rule numero uno? Everyone should know this. Repeat it with me.

Make sure everything is plugged in!

Very good! So I assume, that the helpdesk type asks these questions. They have to, because they put into the call notes "user checked all connections, power/data/etc. All are plugged in and tight". So I show up to diagnose the problem, and Lo! The power cable is sitting NEXT to the PC. I plug it in, and miracle of miracles! It turns on! I ask the user about it. "oh, it was plugged in, I don't know how that happened" LIAR! LIAR! LIAR! Power cables do not disconnect themselves, I know this! Why do people do this? Do they think we're to dumb to figure it out? Do they think we'll give them a new PC? I honestly don't know. It's the same thing with mobile FLO workstations. There are labels everywhere to keep them plugged in when not in use. We tell the nurses, constantly, plug them in. We round the floors, and find them in various states of non-function. What's our first troubleshooting question?
Do you keep them plugged in?

The answer is always the same. Yes. We keep them plugged in all the time, they are junk, it's not our fault. So why is it when I check the battery levels, they are always depleted. Occasionally, I'll bring up this fact, the rebuttal most of the time sounds like this: Oh, well, it was broken anyways, so we unplugged it and put it there. Great, so now the user is illiterate, and ignores the 8 million "call the helpdesk @ Extension _____!" signs everywhere. If I ask why the helpdesk wasn't called, I get one of two responses, without fail.

Response 1: we're to busy to call in broken devices to the helpdesk.
A lie because: If your to busy to call things in, then you should be to busy to play solitaire, spider, or any of the internet games our logs show you playing constantly. noone seems to understand that we log just about every user activity on our devices.

Response 2: We did call it in, noone ever came to fix it.
A lie because: Every call to the helpdesk is logged by the service call management system. If you called, there would be a record. There is no record because you never called. There is no conspiracy to make it look like you didn't do your job, you just didn't do it.

I know their lying. They know their lying. So why do they continue to do it? Frankly I just don't understand, and it drives me nuts.

blarg. All day at work I had some really nice topics to talk about. I get home, I open up the blog page, and my mind goes blank. Nice.

So my Perfect Grade Strike is coming along, slowly. Rather than paint, I'm working with Vinyl Dye this time. It's gotten alot of positive reviews from case modders over the years, and so far exceeds all expectations I had. Vinyl dye is like a VERY thin spray paint, which actually seeps into the plastic, recoloring it. Since it's so thin, it doesn't fill small details like paint does, and it dries SUPER fast, so I can recoat in almost 10 minutes. Dye is incredibly hard to screw up, whereas paint is easy to FUBAR. The only downside to Dye is it smells horrible until it dries, I can't even bring the pieces into the house for a few hours after I'm done with them. Dark color dyes, like black, grey, etc. look fantastic when they dry, but I'm not as happy with white and some of the other light colors. I did end up having to use plain old paint for a few sections, and I really noticed a difference in how it looks compared to dye. Dye > all at this point, for plastics.

Few things going on lately. First off, I have some new music for y'all to check out. I've known of Juno Reactor for some time now (I have bible of Dreams and Shango), but on an urge I picked up Hotaka and Labyrinth the other day off iTunes. I really really dig the new sound. Juno Reactor is really unlike any other music I have, they are simply that unique.

The other band, surprisingly, came to me from MTV. I caught the video of Gnarls Barkley's "Crazy" from the VMA's and I was really impressed. Gnarls is an amalgamation of soul, funk, and god knows what else. I bought St. Elsewhere, and damn, the whole album is just fantastic. It's well outside the realm of my normal music, but I just can't stop listening to it. Check it out, seriously.

The other thing killing my free time lately is another Gundam model. I did a 1/144 scale Master Grade a year or so ago, and it was a blast. Like 250 parts, and it took me a few days. The other week I bought the 1/60 scale Perfect Grade Strike kit, and damn, if it isn't a blast :D. Almost 800 parts, and no English instructions lol. Hopefully mine will end up looking this good when I'm done. I've got about 8 hours or so tied up in it, and I'm not even halfway done with the frame, and I've still got painting out the ass to do as well.

I should probably be sleeping, or heading to bed, but, my old friend Insomnia is back. Ahhh, how I've "missed" thee. How bad is it? Oh, it's bad. Last night I didn't drop off until something like 4AM, netting me a measly 2 hours of sleep before work. The night before? 5AM. I think this is all triggered by the fact that it's 95 freaking degrees in NE Ohio.....in May. Hell, last year we were wearing coats at this point still. Oh well.

So, Insomnia usually leads to me doing odd projects, so I have a few things I've been working on to pass the time. I uploaded some of my vacation photo's to Flickr, so you too can participate in at least half of the Brewery and Battlefield tour 2006 Take a look, it's bound to be interesting at least to some people. Yes Joe, that's me, in direct sunlight. I know, I know, I'm scared too.

I also broke down, for lack of something else to do, and put together a (shudder) Myspace page. In reality it's just alot of links back to here, because I don't update this page enough, so why would I want to add a whole second page of content to try and work with. And I've seen way to many absolutely horrid looking myspace pages. I could vomit in a bucket, let it sit in the sun for a week, and whatever crawled out could produce a better layout than like 80% of the people on myspace, seriously. Have some freaking pride people, your displaying yourself and if your anything like your page, I wouldn't want to meet you to begin with. ugh.

I think most of my aversion to myspace revolves around this issue. Like most geeks, I've got this whole Obsessive/compulsive thing going on, so pages that look like a
Microsoft Frontpage template exploded make me all twitchy. I have the feeling like putting me on myspace is the equivalent of wading into a pool of HTML sewage. yay sewage!