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Yesterday was System Administrator Appreciation Day around the world. It’s supposed to be a day where the corporate world recognizes the hard, thankless work of their IT department, similar to Secretaries' Day with fewer blow jobs. It’s been celebrated for the past eight years… except where I work. It’s not because the company doesn’t appreciate it’s system administrators… or so I keep telling myself. I mean, they could appreciate us a little more in the wallet. No, it’s because the past two Sysadmin Days, we’ve had server crashes. Last year, one of our major hosting servers lost not one, but two hard drives from a RAID 10 array. So, superstition got the better of them, and they refused to celebrate with punch and pie. Cowards. I couldn’t resist teasing the imaginary natural order of the universe, though. I wished them “HaPpY SySaDmIn DaY” more than once and got replies of “Shut up!” I even tried to summon “Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice!” It was all fun… and there were no casualties in any of our data centers. Maybe now that the curse is broken, we can celebrate in 2008.
I dropped LDriver off at his house after our soul-sucking commute (complete with highway death) and was heading home. It was a very pleasant evening, so I had the windows rolled down and the stereo cranked. After a stop at a red light, I set cruise control at 40 mph. As I was driving through a school zone, I looked in the rear view mirror and saw the red and blue flashing lights of a sheriff’s deputy behind me. Goddammit, not again! What the hell did I do wrong? I looked at my speedometer, and I was at exactly 40. I had my seat belt on, and with the exception of one of three bulbs in my CHMSL tail light, I know my lights are working. Fuck! I hit the turn signal and pulled over to the side of the road… only to watch the deputy speed by me on his way to someplace else. Excellent! Pass the pipe!
If you read my previous blog update, I was whining like a liberal about Philly cheesesteaks on the west coast. Sick Tech “Ditech” Jake suggested I combine and sell Philly food with domain hosting. Only priests molesting young boys at church is only slightly more stupid. Tina, however, came to my rescue with a suggestion of porn and Philly food. I was laughing with LDriver about Tina’s idea on the way home last night, and I told him I’d come up with some pictures. After some surprisingly easy Photoshopping, I came up with several cool-yet-NSFW pictures that you might find funny… or slightly disturbing. You can find those pictures here, here, here, here, and here. And you thought Ron Jeremy had a lot of meat.
Last weekend, I took my truck to have the oil changed. I’ve been going to Jiffy Lube since I bought the truck last summer, but Jiffy Lube always wanted to sell me 700 other services from new wiper blades to rusty trombones to flushing every drop of fluid in the truck. On top of that, the last time Jiffy Lube changed the oil, their dumb-ass grease monkey stripped the oil plug. They told me they did it, and even replaced the plug with a new one, and took $40 off my final bill. Fast forward to last weekend. I decided to try Wal-Mart‘s Tire & Lube Express Center. I didn’t want to take it to Jiffy Lube again after reading all the shit at jiffylubeproblems.com. I know other people that go to Wal-Mart without trouble… so why not?
After shopping in the store, I made my way back to their waiting area. Fifteen minutes later, a female tech came in and told me the plug on the oil pan was stripped, and she could not drain the oil. Fuck. I immediately thought of that dicked oil plug at Jiffy Lube. Wal-Mart put on a new filter and topped off the oil for free. I offered to pay for what they did, but they said because they couldn’t complete the service, they couldn’t charge me. Now I can’t get the oil changed until I get the oil pan replaced. The cheapest price I could find for just the oil pan is $60 plus shipping. That doesn’t include the gasket or labor. Goddamn Jiffy Lube.
Well, that’s all for now… I’m too tired… and, uhh… buzzed to keep writing.
