Damnit.  The drop shadows on my images don't render properly in IE.  Damn you, IE, and your lack of standards compliance.

My half hour commute to work took an extra HOUR today.  Grrr....

Apparently part of my website isn't working.  I had to disable part of the Gallery / Wordpress integration.  Annoying.

So I'm back to work...  The break was good, and seeing family was good, too.

Got a flat tire on my way back to Albany yesterday, which Sarah and I had to change on the side of the Thruway.  Not fun.  Also slightly aggravated about the fact that my tire pressure monitoring system never mentioned anything about it.  I have an appointment with the VW dealership tomorrow to have the tire repaired or replaced.  Should be covered under my warranty (I specifically got a tire/wheel warranty), so it shouldn't cost more than a deductible.  C'est la vie, I suppose.

My dad gave me a HO-scale stock car that apparently makes chicken sounds.  I need to wire up a section of track when I get home to try it out.

I did get the Harmony all working yesterday.  It is super-cool.

The Jimmy John's downtown closed.  And the Subway that was displaced by a stupid bank never relocated.  Now the only sub shop near my office that isn't painfully slow is Quiznos.  And I don't really like Quiznos.  And oh yeah, they're painfully slow.  And they're probably going to get slower now that they're going to have more customers.  I WANT MY SUB SHOPS BACK.

Or not... This is my 401(k) over the last year.

I watched the pilot episode for the new Knight Rider series the other day... Actually, I should rephrase that. I tried to watch the pilot episode. But after about 15 minutes, I just couldn't continue. I cannot express in words just how bad it was. I have to admit, I actually liked the original Knight Rider... The theme was actually the ringtone on my cellphone for a while. But I'll be the first person to admit that it was a terrible show. It was just one of those good terrible shows. You know what I mean?

But this new show... Holy crap... It makes the old show look like one of the gems of television. I can't imagine how anyone could even begin to consider it a good show. What were the producers thinking? Oh, and I agree with the reviews I read after the fact that the show is basically just a 40 minute long Ford commercial. Everybody knows that the original KITT was a Trans Am, but that show was anything but a Pontiac commercial... But even in the 15 minutes I watched, there were so many completely intentional shots of the new KITT's Ford logo, or Mustang Cobra emblem... It was insulting. Oh well... One less thing for my DVR to concern itself with.

Sarah, Kate and I just watched Across the Universe. I was skeptical of the movie when I first heard about it since other Beatles-inspired movies in the past had been pretty bad and never saw it for that reason. But we finally decided to watch it and I have to say I'm reasonably impressed. It was a very well done movie, and while it did get a little... um... trippy after about the half way point, it was a good story, and it was shot beautifully. And I have to say that the actors all did a fantastic job, even if none of the leads had established careers. Also, Eddie Izzard as Mr. Kite... Great.

I just paid $4.039 for gas.

So yesterday while I was at work, apparently someone decided that they needed my GPS more than I did and transferred my passenger window onto the passenger seat of my car.  Not exactly the state I wanted my car to be in after leaving my office...  Right now I'm waiting at the glass place for them to cut and install a new window for me.  I think I'll forgo replacing it for now.  It was kind of a piece of junk, and I really don't need it.

Oh well...  Just annoying.

Apparently the most important thing I have to work on it to fix the formatting in a stupid report.  Not fix the content in the report.  Fix the FORMATTING.

This is more important than the other 8 work requests in our queue that ACTUALLY NEED WORK DONE.

Wasn't this stupid war supposed to keep the price of gas down?  The $3.219/gal I just paid suggests not.

Gah...  Week from hell at work.  I was put in charge of a relatively major project (migrating data for a client moving from a competitor to us).  Everything was going smoothly last week (or so I thought), but all kinds of problems this week.

I took Sunday off, since I worked last Friday instead...  Monday went ok.  Not crazy.  Tuesday I worked probably 2 hours after I got home to try and finish things.

Wednesday, I found out that a major component of the migration was skipped (not my fault), but that I was going to have to do the work to get that part loaded...  I left work early (at 5) and went home.  Started working after I got home at about 7, and didn't go to bed until about 2:30 (AM).  Set my alarm to wake me back up at 4 so I could finish what I told the databases to start doing for me at 2.  Went back to sleep at about 4:30 (now Thursday morning).

Slept in for a bit on Thursday, finally getting up and going in at about 12:30.  I thought that everything was done at this point, but found out at 6:15 that there was a major problem with something that I did.  I identified the problem before leaving shortly after 7, but told people that I was too tired to fix it and would fix it Friday.  On the ride home, however, I figured out a solution to the problem, and decided I was better off fixing it then and sleeping on Friday instead.  So I spent about 3 hours fixing it, and then went to bed.

Got a call from by boss today (Friday, yeah, it's not really Friday anymore) at 5:15 (shortly before I was planning to leave for the hockey game) indicating that there was another problem.  Quickly hopped on the VPN and determined that it wasn't actually another problem, it was actually the same problem as yesterday, except in a different place (I previously assumed that the problem yesterday was limited to one location).  So... I told him I could fix it, but not until later.  Went to the hockey game, and then out to dinner with Mike, Yuri, and Rob (who's up for Pep Band Alumni Night tomorrow), got home at about 11, and signed back on...  Just finished working a little while ago.  Hopefully it's not all done.

So, adding that all up, it looks like I worked nearly 50 hours this week, but supposedly only worked 4 days.  Great.

I just better not get any calls tomorrow.  Maybe I should just "forget" my phone at home.

I was just looking at my cellphone bill this morning and I've determined that cellphone companies truly suck. Why you ask? Here's why:

I have an "unlimited*" data access plan on my phone. $15/mo lets me send and receive email, browse the web, look at Google Maps, and hell, even update my blog, all to my heart's content. According to my bill, I used 181,696 KB of data transfer last month. More than I would have expected, but what do I care? It's "free".

So let's look at this from a cost standpoint... 181,696 KB for $15 works out to roughly $0.0826 per megabyte (I'm using mega = 10^6 rather than 2^30, as bandwidth is typically computed in powers of 10). For reference, I estimate that I used approximately 20,159,280 KB at home over the last month at a cost of about $40, for an approximate cost of $0.00198 per megabyte.

So what's the complaint here? Text messages. Last month, I received exactly one text message. Note the bold and italicized text there. RECEIVED and ONE. And the message wasn't sent to me from a friend, or even a random stranger spamming me... It was sent to me BY SPRINT. I did not ask for this message, nor was there any real reason for them to send me the text message. But they still felt the need to charge me for it. How much? 15 cents. Why? Because my cell plan WHICH INCLUDES UNLIMITED DATA does not include text messaging.

Oh, but it's only 15 cents, you say. Forget about it, you say. I say no. Text messages (aka SMS, or Short Messaging Servies) are limited to 160 characters... 160 bytes. One sixth of a kilobyte. And for this message, they have the gall to charge $0.15. That's $937.50 per megabyte. Let me spell that out for you. NINE HUNDRED THIRTY SEVEN DOLLARS AND FIFTY CENTS PER MEGABYTE. 11,350 times more than I paid for my data service. And this particular message wasn't even 160 bytes. It was less, which means the rate is even higher than that.

How do the companies get away with this? I don't know. Lily Tomlin said it best. See the title.

* My "unlimited" plan isn't actually unlimited.  It's limited to some arbitrary value which they define as "excessive".  They won't publish what this value is, but if you exceed it, goodbye cellphone plan.  They can get away with that, too.

Gah... Why do I ever even go to that goddamned mall? Yes, I choose to wear a comfortable T-shirt and shorts when I'm not at work. Yes, I drive a car that is over 3 years old and cost less than 50 grand. Yes, I choose to park my car myself. Does this give you the right to snear at me? Apparently.
I should remember to just shop at normal malls, where half of the parking lot isn't reserved for the valets, and they have Chevrolets and Volkswagons on display, not Porsches and Bentleys.
Damn you, rich people. Grrr....
(If you don't know what mall I was talking about, it's The Mall at Short Hills. They're so stuck up, they even had to make the name "high class".)

It would appear that I've angered the automotive gods. I was driving down the highway yesterday on my way to Troy to go to the football game, and my right rear tire went flat. I made it, but I think I actually might have been riding the rim for a bit.

After the game, I sat down to attempt to refill the tire, and discovered that I'd cracked the valve stem. Not two seconds after making this discovery, however, the sidewall on the tire opened up, and shot pressurized air in my face. I very comically leaped out of the way, but fortunately, the tire stayed in one piece anyway. Scared the crap out of me, but I'm ok, and at least it didn't happen while driving.

Luckily, there was a place right in Troy that offered to stay open late to replace the tire for me (and while I was there, I got the other three replaced, since they were all reasonably worn). So, in the end, no big deal, but it's kind of annoying that this is all happening at once.

I also managed to hose an upgrade of my DVR system (Herman) over the weekend. I rebuilt it, but I lost all of the info that was in the database, which includes the list of previously recorded shows, so now ever episode of every show that Sarah and I watch is going to record again.  I also discovered that the new RAID card I ordered for the backup server (Sledge) isn't compatible (it's PCI-X only, not a hybrid card that works in PCI slots), so I need to return that and wait for the replacement to come in.