Classic Car Quiz

I haven't posted in a few days because I've been busy working on this:

Classic Car Quiz

Its a little quiz I created from pictures I took at the... Car Craft Magazine Summer Nationals at the Minnesota State Fairgrounds!!! (Ya gotta say it in the cheezy radio spot announcer let's get ready to rumble voice for full effect.)
The Summer Nationals is basically just a whole lot of 60s and 70s American muscle cars parked around the streets of the fairgrounds. I got a free ticket from a cow-orker, and since Melba was out of town, I needed some entertainment. I'm not a huge fan of American iron, but it was fun to hike around and I did get some cool photos. See my Flickr page if you're interested.

More support fun

I like to think that I'm pretty good at helping people with computer questions, and I also take pride in doing it in a non-condescending manner, even for simple questions. I know I have asked plenty of stupid computer questions in my life, and have been on the dumbass end more than once - not a good feeling - so I am always careful to keep from putting the people I help in that position.

That said, I sometimes find it very difficult to keep my professional, non-condescending attitude when an otherwise-smart user becomes utterly helpless.

For instance, I just got a call from a user who was having trouble with his mouse. This is a fairly common issue, and one that I have direct experience handling - my own mouse was having the same problems recently. Here's how it played out:

ME: "Did you recently get a new mouse pad, one with a crazy pattern or photo on it?"
USER: "Yes... how did you know?"
ME: "I had the same problem with my mouse, and switching to a solid color mouse pad fixed it."
USER: "Oh. So what do I do?"
ME: "I would recommend getting a solid color mouse pad."
USER: "Oh. Where do I get that?"
ME: "I would recommend ordering one from the Request Center." (An aside - the Request Center is where everything you'd ever want in your life at Machinery, Inc. is ordered. It's a surprisingly through and well-laid out website, linked directly from the main intranet page - he'd have to intentionally avoid this site to not know where it is.)
USER: "Where is the Request Center?"
ME: "It's in the big Service Center link on the main InsideMI webpage."
USER: "Where is the InsideMI webpage?" (At this point, I'm seething - if he has ever opened any web browser on his computer, he would have been transported to this page automatically - the page is set as home on everyone's computers by default)
ME: "Aych tee tee pee, slash slash inside emm eye dot machinery inc dot com"
-Long pause-
USER: "Ok, where do I go from there?"
ME: "Do you see the big button marked Service Center on the top of the page?"
USER: "Yes...."
ME: "Click on it."
USER: "Ok..."
-Pause-
USER: "Now where do I go?"
ME: "Do you see the large boldface button marked Request Center?"
USER: "Yes..."
ME: "Click on it."
USER: "Ok..."
-Another pause-
USER: "Now where do I go?"
ME: "Do you see the large subheading link marked Computer Hardware and Accessories?"
USER: "Yes..."
ME: "Click on it."

At this point, I'll save you from the intense tedium of me leading him the rest of the yellow brick road to the page where he can request a mouse pad. Suffice it to say, a 2nd grader could follow the links on this website and get to exactly what they need in 30 seconds - it's easier than Amazon.com.

Out of curiosity, I looked this user up in the company directory - HE'S A COPY EDITOR. Scary.

I'm amazed when I get calls from people who are otherwise pretty smart, but become absolutely helpless when it comes to things like this. He just shifted into Hold My Hand mode, and suddenly couldn't figure anything out for himself.

Late.

I wanna make him stay up all night
Sister, sister, hes just a plaything
We wanna make him stay up all night
Yeah we do

From time to time, I get a night owl urge and decide to wander around late at night. Last night I grabbed my N50, put the top down on Der Wigglewagon, and went in search of something interesting to photograph.

First thing I saw, the Hennepin Avenue bridge:

Next, I stopped under an I-94 overpass:

Then, had a little fun with long exposures:

After that, I drove around for a bit and ended up at Penn Ave. and 394:


This last one shows the streaked taillights of a State Trooper's patrol car - he paused to yell at me, something about pedestrians not allowed on the on-ramp. Evidently he didn't see the separate pedestrian walkway I was standing on.

After I stopped crying from the abusive officer du law, I headed over to the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden. Spoonbridge and Cherry... ...has been photographed from this angle about 11,842* times, usually with better results than you see here. So I tried to shoot it from another angle to see if I could get something interesting:Didn't really work.

As I was wandering around, I noticed that the Lowry Hill Tunnel was closed, and that crews were cleaning the inside walls with a truck that looked like a massive electric toothbrush on wheels. Sadly, I was unable to get my camera set up in time to get a shot of the truck. It was already inside by the time I shot this:

I made it to bed by 3am, but couldn't fall asleep until 4. Surprisingly, I'm in pretty good shape so far considering I had about 2 hours of sleep.

*The actual number of lakes in Minnesota greater than 10 acres in size.

Office faux pas

Here at Machinery, Inc., I work on the 16th floor, with about 150 other people in a vast cube farm. The elevators and the bathrooms are in the center of the floor, and the bathroom doors face the center of the array of cubes on each side of the floor.

The bathrooms are long and narrow, with three urinals, two stalls, and one XL handicap-accessible stall at the very back. The men's room is ceramic tile on the floor and on all walls, which makes for a room with really harsh acoustics - every last little squeak and pffft gets amplified and echoed.

About an hour ago, I was headed over to the bathroom for a visit and the very moment I opened the door, a guy in the very last XL stall let loose with a violent gaseous eruption that blasted right out the open door and enveloped the cube farm. A chorus of giggles followed from the cubes closest to the bathroom.

Not wanting to be mistaken for the perpetrator, I turned around and headed for the men's room on 17 before too many people could prairie dog me.

People.

A cow-orker of mine sent out an email today to a group of users on a floor that is getting a new black and white printer. The email states clearly that they should use the nearby color printer while their old B&W printer is being replaced, and that they will be notified when the new B&W printer is assigned a network name and is online and ready to go, with instructions on how to add it to their computer's list of printers.

Genius user replies to the email asking how to add the printer to her list of printers, and complains that the new printer does not have a sticker on it listing it's network name.

Was it outwardly rude of me to paste the entire contents of the original email and nothing else as my reply to genius user? I was gunning for subtle sarcasm.

D-Day +1

I never did think of anything interesting to post about turning 35 yesterday. I slept in, lounged around the house in my boxers for a few hours, tinkered with der bimr in the afternoon, and had porkchops with my dad for dinner.

Best part of the day - birthday cake. I haven't had a birthday cake in probably 10 years, and it was delightful. And another cool part of the day - I got a lot of birthday cards and emails this year. I'm bad about sending them out myself, so I hereby resolve to get on top of that and send birthday wishes out to my dear friends.

Apologies to you, my dear reader - I did not take any pictures yesterday. However, I do have one picture from this last weekend:Anyone who has ever golved with me knows that I have a slice that goes right faster than Rush Limbaugh on starboard rudder. Needless to say, I didn't do well on that hole.

Melba and I spent last weekend in Fish Creek, which is in lovely and touristy Door County, Wisconsin. Hank and my MOTHER rented a cabin there for the weekend, so Melba and I drove up. I golfed with Hank on Saturday (he even let me drive the cart - I was surprised), went out for a delightful meal Saturday evening (thanks, Hank!) and relaxed on Sunday before driving home. Hank is quite the gracious host.

35

I turn 35 in about two hours, and I'm not really sure what to think of it.

I'll post again if I think of something.

HandyCamera

One of the best things about pocket-sized digital cameras is that they're really easy to carry around. I have a Canon PowerShot SD300 (highly recommended) that I carry around almost all the time now, and I dig shooting pics of random stuff. A few examples:A handy thing about downtown Minneapolis is the skyway system. You could walk about ten blocks in any direction from the center and never set foot outside. Not terribly exciting when the weather is sunny and warm, but very welcome the other 10 months of the year when it sucks outside.

While I'm on the topic of Minneapolis, I've been seeing it from a few interesting angles lately. This is Lake Calhoun, with Minneapolis in the background.

And this is yours truly with some weird sunglasses hair on the roof of a friend's apartment building.

I was up on that roof for a laid-back 4th of July get together with a small group of friends, and one of the intensely exciting highlights of the evening was the sparklers that Melba brought:That's Melba on the far right.

And this is Melba back home about an hour later:Already crashed out hard, with Murph and Duff keeping her company.

And one last shot that falls square in the random category:This is a tiny old former White Castle restaurant where you can now purchase a wedding ring AND an accordion. One stop shopping, baybee.

Quote of the day

Imagination is more important than knowledge.
- Albert Einstein

Big weekend

Last Thursday, Melba and I hopped in the car and drove to Indianapolis to camp out and experience the 3 days of festivities that are the United States Grand Prix. I want to make something clear right off about the USGP - it is not NASCAR. Half the people we have told about our weekend adventure assumed we were whoopin' it up with the rednecks watchin' the stock cars go roundy round to the left. Not so.

The USGP is Formula 1 racing - the world's best drivers in the world's most technologically advanced cars on road courses. NASCAR is America's best stock car drivers in cars that are purposely kept relatively basic, on oval tracks.

This was my first time seeing an F1 race in person, and I was amazed at how diverse the fans were - people from all over the world were in Indiana to see this race. Everywhere we walked, we heard different languages being spoken, flags from all over the world, and a (mostly) mellow but avid party atmosphere. The one exception to the mellow was a group of Brazilian dudes in our campground who partied ferociously the entire weekend, and even managed to stay up 2 days straight:
These guys had a near-continuous barbecue pit going with spectacular food on tap. Never saw many women hanging out there, though.

During the race, we were sitting between a large, rowdy group of Colombians and a smaller, more subdued group of Finns. Every driver seemed to have groups of fans from his country waving flags and honking horns every lap by. Michael Schumacher (German, not related to Brigitta) won the race for Scuderia Ferrari, and the other Ferrari driven by Felipe Massa (a Brazilian) came in 2nd. I had more fun watching the testing and qualifying laps - we had better seats for those days.

Melba and I both got too much sun this weekend, despite liberal use of sunscreen. My car ran fine but needs an A/C recharge, so we were forced to run with the top down - and got a little scorched.

The festivities away from the track were just as fun - I met up with a handful of online friends whom I have known for a long time but never met in person. It was cool to put a face to the names and personalities.