BrainWyrms

Today is going to be a WONDERFUL day.  Yes, I am SCREAMING in sarcasm right now.  First off, I’m still hobbling around with my cane.  My hip keeps twinging, so I’m going to stay off my feet as much as possible - but that’s really just a joke because I cannot stay off my feet at work.

Then I find out that out of my four press operators and one backup, only one has shown up for work today.  According to the communication board, I have work for three of the four lines and one of them has priority despite being half broken.  So, I act in accordance and send away all of my line operators but one.

But now, as I am double checking to see which lines I need to have ready for 1st shift to run, I see that I was actually looking at OLD information and that the current information is that I did have work for all four lines.  So that means that I made the wrong decision.  I should have been running the half line that requires a press operator, and the line that does not require a press operator should have also been run.  Great.  Now I’m definitely, no doubt about it, going to get my ass chewed in the morning.

I need to get the rest of the lines ready for the morning, but I want to replace a broken part on the one that is not going to be running until 3rd shift Tuesday, 24 hours away.  We hadn’t had any in stock two weeks ago when I first spotted the part, but the maintenance manager for my department had ordered a set and given me one.  Of course, the threads are the wrong size.  I can’t even find an appropriate adapter.  So now, I am right where I started.  With a pocketful of wrong part.

Then I go to check my twessages [haha] and find that the screen on my phone won’t turn on.  No really, my new phone won’t turn on.  But the battery light is flashing.  Flip open the keyboard, still no lights, tap here tap tap tap there.  I’m mentally and physically gearing up for a good freak out while fumbling around with the backplate trying to remove it so that I can pop the battery and force a power cycle.

Thankfully that worked.
I’m coming up on first break, two hours into the shift, and I have about four hours of personal work left to go on this shift.  Assuming everything works out SMOOTHLY, I will get it done in time.  Which is to say that there is no bloody way I’m going to get all of my business done.  So I’ll get more ass chewing in the morning.  Hoooray!

Today I started doing my comic catch-up reading. I kicked off my pile with Serenity Better Days 1 of 3. I can’t quite comment on the story yet, except that it is shaping up to have the potential for a good tale. What I can say is that the artist, the one with the pencil, is seriously good. I can see Mal and Jayne and well… everyone looks just like they should. I’ve got 2 of 3 lined up to read in the morning, and I’m looking forward to how this is going.

I finally got around to doing my WordPress upgrade AND I got the Akismet plugin going. I was getting really, no really really really really (ad nausem), annoyed with the 60+ drug-bases SPAM comments and trackbacks I’ve been getting on a daily basis.

Why does ‘basis’ look so wrong? Strange looking word, like it’s all mangled up after starting life ‘basic’… maybe merged with ’statis’?

And now, to wrap things up before I head into work, I am watching the new episode of Smallville. Which is nifty keen, but better still is that track that played during the dance scene with Jimmy and Chloe.  I don’t know who or what that was, but I quite enjoyed it and would like to at least hear it again.

I’m looking into the cost of buying a replacement screen for my Creative Zen V.  CASizemore had suggested a link to me a few weeks ago, but I’ve (shockingly) forgotten where that went to.  Right now I am checking out an eBayer with 3 for ~$30.  Maybe next week, especially if I can find a decent walk-through on cracking this case open.  My biggest concern is shattering the case itself.  That’s not something that I know how to go about fixing at all, whereas I am pretty certain I can plug and chug a new screen in.

Molly Wood, co-host of the Buzz Out Load daily tech news podcast (amongst a host of other things), posted on her blog the other day about why her Zune is dead to her now.  She lists five reasons that have caused her feel this way, and I have to say, yeah… she’s dead on.

I think the worst part of this is that the hardware itself is rather nice.  Not quite as nice as a click-y wheel, like the iPods and some of the Sansas, but still a good thing.  And ruining everything is the software, and to a lesser extent, the firmware/UI.

Maybe they’ll release a less than craptastic bit of programming with the 3rd gen Zune hardware.

HaHaHa Ha Ha!  Sorry, I crack myself up sometimes.

I spent several hours over the past few days working on getting my Zune 30 to sync with my Zune software.  (I was craving my Buzz Out Loud.)  During this period of time I re-downloaded and installed all of the latest software, drivers, patches, etc.  I uninstalled the software.  I manually deleted the registry entries (since the uninstall doesn’t bother with this.)

After doing an uninstall followed by a registry cleaning and a reboot, I was able to at least get the software side of things working in a very stable manner.  Until I tried to connect the Zune.  When given the option to sign in as a guest or to make this “new” computer my home, I chose to move.  After that, I was given the option to start syncing things or to wait on that.  It was when I chose to sync my podcasts that the software failed out.

I detached my Zune 30 and executed the software again.  Still looking good - even on the podcast tab - until I connected the Zune 30.  Boom!  Down and out again.

Re-run the software, change the settings to NOT sync.  Connect the hardware.  Stable… check the podcasts tab of my “collection” and still holding strong.  Poke around and around and still looking good.  Poke too far, this time into the podcast tab of my “device” and Boom!  Down again.

Okay.  This is what I am thinking.  I’ve got a corrupt something or other.  It is on the my Zune 30, not on my HDD.  I think it is one of my podcasts or podcast feeds, but it could be the photos or the music or the videos.  As long as I don’t try to update the podcasts or look at them on the player, I’m good.

So I go in and hand wipe everything from the player.  No more music.  No more photos.  No more podcasts.  I have a fit and leave my Roswell Pilot episode on ‘cuz it took literally hours on the old machine to transcode and copy onto the player.

Then I start setting up my sync options.  And so far, everything is holding steady.  I’m still having some really odd moments, like how the hardware says that I have still got four artists and some 20-odd tracks but the software says that I have a single artist with no tracks at all.  But so far… so far, my luck is holding.  I have about 20 of my 103 feeds resubbed and synced up again.

I’m taking it slow and hopefully will be able to identify where things go bad IF I hit that suspected corrupt file again.  But I’d much rather just have it work and continue working.  Because I really do need my Buzz Out Loud every single freakin’ day.

I’ve been playing Maegia with elegiac for a while now. He’s made it up to the top five and I had wormed my way up to 35 at one point.

Until today. When I logged in and found that I had suddenly:

Dinoslave as added you in his friends list !      15/04 - 19h47
Ozbek is now tagged as a friend !     15/04 - 12h30
You have been unable to defend your lands from Scareman (None) !     15/04 - 12h18
Your campaign in Kirkis`s (None) lands was successful !     15/04 - 11h47
Gdizzy as added you in his friends list !     15/04 - 11h22
Korrigan as added you in his friends list !     15/04 - 11h06
None as added you in his friends list !     15/04 - 10h43
You have successfully protected your Kingdom from ShadowXen (MLG) !     15/04 - 10h39
Your campaign in Aesma Daeva`s (O) lands was successful !     15/04 - 10h27
Your campaign in Drzul`s (None) lands was successful !     15/04 - 10h27
Naeril is now tagged as a friend !     15/04 - 10h26
Dinoslave is now tagged as a friend !     15/04 - 10h26
None is now tagged as a friend !     15/04 - 10h26
Noe is now tagged as a friend !     15/04 - 10h26
Miezekatze is now tagged as a friend !     15/04 - 10h26
Kanonenbär is now tagged as a friend !     15/04 - 10h26
Eisberg is now tagged as a friend !     15/04 - 10h26
You have been accepted into the Naked Nerds Alliance !     15/04 - 09h41

Of course… I hadn’t done any of that. Someone “hacked” my account and used it to join the Naked Nerds Alliance. Why? Hell if I know. I guess it was really my fault for assuming that no one would care enough to actually bother even attempting to screw with my piddling character.

The problem is that game of Maegia does not yet support the option to quit a quild once you have joined. So I deleted my character.

Then I made a new character. Exactly the same as before. Ha. I win!

My Zune hardware, despite having a somewhat anemic battery life (but don’t they all) and a defective hold switch (it wants to fall off and it occasionally turns itself on mentally), is a fairly good piece of podplaying tech.

The software, on the other hand, is a mental reject.

To be fair, I realize that part of the problem is that I just ripped the guts out of my box and replaced everything but the hard drive. So Windows XP wasn’t happy with me, and neither was Microsoft’s overly DRM-happy Zune software. I had to reinstall first XP and then the Zune software.

Why didn’t Microsoft follow in Apple’s trail and name the freakin’ software something else? It’s stoopid that I have to say Zune S or Zune H every single time. St00p1d!!!

To continue, even after patching XP up to date and re-installing all the bits of Zune S (’cuz it’s not just point-and-click), the program faulted out every time that I opened it. It was at this point that I discovered how bloody crappy the official information for the Zune really is. If you want help with your problems, then you are going to have to either look outside of the official channels or be some sort of Knowledge Base ninja (’cuz I sure couldn’t find any useful information - on ANY topic.) Eventually I found a posting on a forum somewhere that suggested the DRM must be corrupt and to delete the DRM directory under “Documents and Settings/All Users/”. I feel that a !!!!! is warranted at this point.

That worked for me. I deleted the DRM dir and was able to actually update my podcasts for a few days. Syncing the Zune H worked fine and all was well. Until something when glitch and an in progress sync session was interrupted. After that, I haven’t been able to update my podcasts becuase every single time the Zune S fails out as soon as I click on the Collection - Podcast tab. Boom! Fails out with what amounts to no error message for me to trouble shoot with. Of course, it does not check my feeds, download new tracks, update the Zune H, or remove old tracks either.

The delete the DRM folder trick didn’t work this time. I uninstalled the software and re-installed it. It took 15 seconds to reinstall, so I was pretty sure that it didn’t actually get rid of anything. The Zune S failed out as soon as I hit Podcast. So I deleted the DRM folder, uninstalled and deleted the Zune S. Rebooted! And then reinstalled the software.

That actually worked.

For 15 minutes.

I’m back to square zero. I can’t seem to find reliable troubleshooting information for the Zune 2.3 software. As far as I can tell, the error code being sent to Microsoft is something like #0000000005. I haven’t found any information on that error. At this point, I’m going to have to get out Regedit and start pruning things away in a manner that always makes me nervous. Or find a new podcatcher program and manually transfer the ‘casts in and out.

I wish that the software just worked. I also wished that there was any good podcatcher software out there. (Don’t bother telling me about some ‘catcher software that is sooo great, cuz it isn’t. I’ve tried most of them and they are all suckbags in more than one aspect.) I also wish that ID3 tags included a field for “played”. I bet that would catch on really fast as a way to get around the monoliths of podcatching.

P.S.  I didn’t really get into the issues with the software when it is actually working.  I’ll come back to this sometime.

Oh joy.  My nose is now all Irish red from spending the day in a sneezing fit.   My head feels like it is now the shrapnel left over after an explosion.

On the good side, … oh.  I can’t think of a good side.  This just plain sucks.

Jade starts her new job today.  So I start my new sleep schedule… today.  Basically this means that for at least the next two weeks I am going to be out of my mind.  Well, even MORE out of my mind.

I figure this means I’ll either get over my current inability to think of anything that I want to say or that I’ll really have nothing to say.

I was trying to think of the expression for when you can’t go pee ‘cuz there are people in the room, but I can’t remember it now.  But that’s kind of how I feel right now about writing.  I really wanna do it, but I realize that I don’t know how to write.  I mean, I don’t know how to write grammatically.  And so I’m feeling really embarrassed about it, wanting to write and watching these writers and listening to their excellent podiobooks and thinking thoughts like “oh my god how can I even think to compare myself…”  Stupid thoughts like that.

Hooray.

Jareth: You remind me of the babe.
Goblin: What babe?
Jareth: The babe with the power.
Goblin: What power?
Jareth: The power of voodoo.
Goblin: Who do?
Jareth: You do.
Goblin: Do what?
Jareth: Remind me of the babe.

I’ve had this section of dialog floating in my head all night. I had originally planned on finishing up my re-watch of Underworld 2 this morning - guess I’ll be watching Labyrinth instead.

*Everything*! Everything that you wanted I have done. You asked that the child be taken. I took him. You cowered before me, I was frightening. I have reordered time. I have turned the world upside down, and I have done it all for *you*! I am exhausted from living up to your expectations of me. Isn’t that generous?

I guess I should have taken a screen shot so I could share the ridiculous comment spam that i’ve be getting for the past few days.  Today, I had 58 trackbacks of random drugs on random posts.  I guess this is my payment for using a very popular (and very easy) publishing package.