Okay, before I start the round of classifieds....

I'm hiring again. I need a .NET programmer adept at web and desktop applications. We have a suite of applications primarily involved in collecting data files, moving them between different server relays, processing them, and reporting. Relevant skills include:

• Visual Basic 6
• Visual Basic .NET
• Access & SQL Server databases (stored procedures on SQL Server)
• Understanding of common Internet protocols: HTTP, FTP, SMTP, etc
• Ajax
  
• Decent understanding of interface usability, both standalone apps and web
• Ability to assume complete ownership of a project and see it through to the end

( edited to add a cut )

Several window AC units. Three or four; I lost exact count.

In excellent condition and work great.

We have central air and want them out of our basement.

****UPDATE*****

It turns out we have six. I don't know if all of them work or not. I'll test them tonight.

Two are already spoken for by the danabren. Is anyone else going to be at Crown tomorrow? I can bring a few for delivery.

Seriously, this is great. It starts off impressive, then gets full of awesome.

Competely safe for work, although the disco soundtrack and the commentary will make you want to stick pencils in your ears.

Anybody want a contract job, or know of anyone who wants a contract job, doing some Access programming?

Situation: we have an Excel template worksheet with some pretty hairy calculations.  This spreadsheet gets filled out and imported into an Access database, which then turns around and spits out a report.

What we want: The whole thing to be done in a single Access database.  Form entry, reports, storage, etc.

It doesn't sound all that difficult to me, but I don't have time to do it (or inclination to work around Access' limitations).  This is an ongoing project that comes as part of a company we just acquired.  Their outsourced developer claims it will require 100 man hours of programming time, which I think is more appropriate for getting a complete web application launched.

...but my graphix skills are not leet.

( Instead I present a clash of three cultures )

My minion's last day was today.  I'll keep in touch with him, but he's off to a new job three miles from his house.  I wish him the best.

Remember when Radar left the unit on M*A*S*H and Klinger had to take over? I don't, because the show was way before my time. But I've heard about it.

Are you all sure you don't know anybody looking for a job? Basic tech support and good programming are all I'm looking for. I'll consider someone who doesn't know VB.NET if he/she is good with another language.  .NET isn't too hard to pick up and there's a solid codebase here to learn from.

( ***********edit: official job description*************** )

Crap. My minion just handed in his resignation. He very much enjoys it here, but the commute is too far. His wife had to rush to the emergency room a month ago and it took him an hour to get there.

So. Anybody looking for a job in IT? The position is 50% tech support (network, desktop, and servers) and 50% .NET programming.

**********edit*************

The location for this job is in Princeton Junction, NJ, near Lawrenceville.

Applicants must be skilled in desktop support, including hardware issues and general software support. Familiarity with networking concepts is a plus.

Additionally, this position develops and supports web based applications written in .NET and legacy ASP code, and there are desktop applications which require incremental production support.

This is a job that requires a lot of self-management, with the ability to recognize priorities and act on them.

I have opinions. The ones I share most are the ones that won't start an argument, like music.

I tend to form strong opinions about music, and of course mine are always correct.  I can state with great certainty, for instance, that rap is not music and has no redeeming value as an "art" form whatsoever.

That being said, I'm interested in what everyone else thinks.  I therefore lay down this challenge:

Name some overrated and underrated musicians.  The catch is that I want to know one underrated musician for every overrated one you list.  This is not a "X band sucks!" discussion.  I'm also curious about your reasoning.

I'll start:

I think Eric Johnson doesn't get anywhere near the acknowledgment that he should.  He's one of the most amazing guitarists I've ever heard, from composition to technique.  His albums are full of amazing compositions played with a master's touch in an array of different styles and genres.  And yet, the only song of his I've ever heard played on the radio is "Cliffs of Dover."  The only people that seem to know about him are guitarists.

And Neal Peart of Rush has nothing going for him whatsoever.  Guys like Mike Portnoy from Dream Theater blow him away, and do it without the hollow lyrics, cliche song structures, or tedious music.

Yee haw.  The abs are coming back.

( Warning: picture of me shirtless )

Question for you all:

LJ has debuted the nudge feature. This is amusing on its own, but....

What's more interesting is that this page bypasses some of the built-in security features that LJ has. If you check that page, you'll only see mutual friends who haven't posted in the last week.  The funny bit is that it bypasses the security check to see whether you're permitted to see the postings of everyone on your friends list.

In other words, if a friend does not appear on that list, but you don't see anything from them in the past week, it means you have been restricted from their postings.  Since the page only shows mutual friends, that implies the use of custom friends groups to filter you out.  Surely if you filter someone out, you don't necessarily want them knowing you've posted, either.

This is probably only useful to the desperate and the stalkers, but I notice it because I code stuff like this professionally and on a hobby basis.  It amuses me to see a site release a tool that bypasses its own access control.

Anyway, my question is whether anyone else is concerned about this.  I am leaving this post public, as I'd like to solicit comments from anyone and everyone before reporting it to the LJ staff as a bug.

Yo ho, yo ho, a pirate's life for me!

It truly is a wonderful thing to have a hobby that involves blunt force application of friendliness.

I'm serious here.  Combine an athletic workout, face to face friendly competition, slight potential for danger and/or pain, and the stress and anxiety melts away.

We're home safe, but damn that was a scary ride. We made it up to 12th Night in one hour, twenty minutes.  It took us three hours, ten minutes through the driving snow. On 195, it was coming down so heavy, thick, and windy that we literally could not see the road in front of us.

My stomach is slowly unclenching.  Between the stress of idiot drivers, driving conditions, and the possibility that I've really wrecked a good friendship earlier, my gut is a lead ball the size of a grapefruit about now.

( Shaving doesn't make me look 16 anymore )

I've gone and made this LJ friends-only.  I realize that I say a lot of silly and weird things that could easily be misunderstood by those who don't know me well.  There's enough social speculation in the world without me adding to it.

So my day's going well.  I had my annual review this morning and got promoted from IT Services Supervisor to IT Services Manager.  As part of this new position, I'm going to be formally codifying what the IT Services department consists of and laying out policy (not to mention wearing a tie).  It'll mostly be clarifying the way things are now and shooting for perfection with the rest.

Even more exciting, I got to promote my underling last week.  He does 50% tech support and 50% programming.  His title was IT Support Associate, but I felt that was inadequate to describe his real value to us.  He's now an IT Services Analyst.  We picked a real winner when we hired him.

• People down south are real nice.
• I know I say "y'all" a lot, but damn.
  
• I got the phrase "You aren't from around these parts, are you?" three times in Kentucky alone.
• Interestingly, it was "You aren't" and not "Y'all ain't"
• Banjos are terrifying in person
• No, I'm sure I want a WAP, not a router.  Yes, I know what routers are.  Yes, I know that routers are self-contained and are great for managing a small network.  Yes, I'm sure I don't want one.  Yes, I know why Staples changed their logo from "Yeah, we got that" because they don't got it.
• I now remember why I don't watch TV.
• It's safe to say an airport is laid back when they don't open until forty-five minutes before the flight

Yay.  Traveling to Kentucky, West Virginia, and Alabama this week to hook up a new acquisition to our network.  Also check out their existing network infrastructure, take away their desktop admin privileges if necessary, etc etc etc.

Normally I'd be able to walk them through this on the phone, but out of the three offices, I only talked to one guy who seemed to know what he was doing.  Also I've been asked to evaluate them for server, upgrades, the usual.

I'm not taking a computer with me, so I'll be offline most of the week.  It's like working and vacation at the same time.

You know, I'm as big a fan as anyone of trivia, obsessive hobbies, and purity of form, but sometimes even I have to advise someone to take a deep breath and get a life.

Anyone interested?

Next week I'll be in Alabama on business, so it's definitely off then.  At least the company office is 4.4 miles from the local fighter practice, but the site doesn't list what day it is.  I'll have to contact someone to see if they want a meet and beat.

SYN

( Loot )

( Thoughts on World of Warcraft and Guild Wars )

So, I was supposed to be traveling on business next Monday through Thursday.  It was to be a whirlwind tour of three sites of our most recent acquisition in Kentucky and Alabama.

Note for the curious: this would have involved about twelve hours of driving in two days, interspersed with hooking the labs up to our VPN and switching all desktops to our mail and logon servers.  Yum.

AT&T entrusted overnight delivery of the VPN routers to Fedex, who promptly delivered one of them six hours late and left the other two, according to their site, in Memphis.  But that does't matter, because AT&T still hasn't created the credentials that would allow me to authenticate the routers on the VPN head anyway.

Sigh.  The trip is pushed back at least a week.

Someone at the office gave me a lottery ticket for Christmas.  This is the first time I have ever been given a ticket that has won anything.  I am $2 richer.  Perhaps I'll go spend it at Taco Bell.

We're on.

I'll be asking for assistance getting precise measurements on me, since the patterns I built are for fighting and therefore sized excessively.

In case y'all were wondering, this is Eisental.

So I'm trying to upgrade my wardrobe as part of a long-term self-improvement.  This plan also includes becoming more organized, which involved getting off my ass once in a while.

The IT department at work has morphed, under my jurisdiction, from the one guy running around fixing computers to an essential part of the business, tying offices together, cutting costs, and increasing the value of our products by tying them to real-time monitoring.  It's time I treated the department with respect by dressing for it.  Of course, when I walked in this morning wearing a tie, everyone assumed I'd just come from an interview.  (On that note, I finally mastered the full windsor.)

Anyhoo, a week after I decided this I got a call from Purple Heart soliciting clothing donations.  It's a sign, I say.  Half my closet is going out on the front porch Friday morning, neatly bagged and ready for someone else.  It's all in good condition, just not anything I'm going to wear again.  I haven't worn most of it for years anyway, so it's just taking up space.

Good call on not showing up, y'all.  It was icy.

Also the lady was making scented candles with two guests all evening.  The entire house smells like a giant scratch n' sniff sticker now.

We're slimy, we're squishy, we're all a little fishy,
You humans are delishy and we're feasting on your brains!

We're abysmal creatures, with gross horrific features -
Against Cthulhoid cult preachers the good guys go insane!

So here's Miskatonic U where all the creatures dwell.
Take a look at a mythos book and find yourself in hell!

Your guns aren't defective - they just aren't effective.
Our feast of human flesh and souls is tasting swell!

Your magic and voodoo will not stop great Cthulhu;
Don't eat with the Tchoo Tchoo; the Migo steal your brain!

Here's Narly, Tsathoggua, and over there's Cthuga.
Don't forget Ithaqqua, and Hastur hates his name!

So here's dread R'lyeh where the angles are a wrong.
You'll lose your soul and go insane if you stay here too long!

We're slimy, we're squishy, we're all a little fishy.
Our feast of human flesh and souls is gonna start!

And now we'll eat your heart.

More here.

We're on, but don't come if the roads aren't safe.

Apparently the song from "WoW Meets Porn" is from a Broadway play, Avenue Q.  There's an alternate version here (minus the WoW).   I'm not watching it 'cause I'm at work.

Yes, the original play uses muppets.  That explains the voices.

The "custom logo" spammers are back.

So you say you wanted money but you know it’s never funny
When your shoes worn through and there’s a rumble in your tummy
But you had to have style get a gold tooth smile
Put a girl on the corner so you can make a pile
Committed a crime and went inside
It was coming your way but you had to survive
When you lost your babe, you lost the race
Now you’re looking at me to take her place.


God has a cruel, wicked sense of humor.

I think I'll hit the Iron Bog fencing practice tonight.  I haven't been there yet.

You go to hell, Disney!  You go to hell and die!

( Tigger! )

( So here's the fabric I've been fretting about. )

We're on.

I shoulda been an economist.  The two semesters I had in college severely warped my view of the world, but not in a bad way.  I read articles like this at least twice to make sure I didn't miss anything, and because the subject matter is so fascinating.  (You can tell by my dangling participles I shouldn't have been a writer.)

I think if I pursue post-grad education I'll skip the MBA thing since everyone has one anyway and look more at finance.  That should at least be interesting as well as useful

How idiotic is this?

Not the story, which is really weak, but the fact that the "View Larger Image" link pops up a window with...a smaller image

This here summarizes HP better than anything else I've ever read.

It's probably safe to click that while feeding a small child.

Yay, more snow.  I'm not going to practice tonight.

(It's safe to click that link while feeding a child.)

....but I love the pictures you get from it.

(It's safe to click this if you're feeding a child.)

Oh God.

*Edit: be cautious when clicking this link if you're feeding a child.*

Anyone else not getting replies via email?

This is awesome.

Guilty!

*Edit* News article, but might not be safe for work.

We're on.

Americans are so lazy by comparison.