Memorial Day

A time for remembering. Remembering troops who have died to protect our country. I suppose it's also a time to remember great movies by watching the original Star Wars trilogy after seeing the new Episode III. What did you all think about the new Star Wars film? I thought it was great aside from a few small plot points.

Great quote from Empire Strikes Back: Sir it's quite possible that this asteroid is not entirely stable.

Well, I'm on call for work tonight for some upgrade that's going on. I hope I don't actually get called, but I'm supposedly the expert on this system if something goes wrong.

16 Reasons Why Alcohol Should Be Served at Work

I found this on our network at work and it's quite humorous.

16 Reasons Why Alcohol Should Be Served at Work

1. It's an incentive to show up.
2. It leads to more honest communications.
3. It reduces complaints about low pay.
4. Employees tell management what they think, not what they want to hear.
5. It encourages car pooling.
6. Increase job satisfaction because if you have a bad job, you don't care.
7. It eliminates vacations because people would rather come to work.
8. It makes fellow employees look better.
9. It makes the cafeteria food taste better.
10. Bosses are more likely to hand out raises when they are wasted.
11. Salary negotiations are a lot more profitable.
12. Employees work later since there's no longer a need to relax at the bar.
13. It makes everyone more open with their ideas.
14. Eliminates the need for employees to get drunk on their lunch break.
15. Employees no longer need coffee to sober up.
16. Sitting "Bare ass" on the copy machine will no longer be seen as gross

How many engineers does it take to keep a bathroom clean

I really want to post this sign in our restrooms. I guess it doesn't matter how many well educated engineers you have in a building, you still end up with pee on the floor. I've walked in our restroom at times and been absolutely disgusted. And then the sink ends up with a sheet of water on it from people dripping their wet hands.

Support

Support -- so it'd be nice if different groups coordinated their absenses. We had an "emergency" issue yesterday that required the support of Network Engineering, and the Firewall Team. Only between vacation, sickness, and jury duty, there was only _one_ firewall engineer in the entire company who was available to work with us yesterday. And even this person had other priorities that caused her to not answer pages and make us wait 2+ hours for assistance. All the while I was in a different building without a computer to work on and my lead was in Florida on the other end just sitting twittling our thumbs waiting for a call back. Same story trying to get a hold of Network Engineering... seems nobody was also around yesterday. Now I know they are two different teams, and you can't really plan for sickness or jury duty, but come on... yesterday was just ridiculous.

On a nicer note, there is a new NASA program on site that I get to help design the network for. I love all the cool little projects and programs that we get to work on. :)

Grade Reports

Well, Finals went much better than I expected, and I ended up with an A and an A- in both of my classes. Now on to all the paperwork to get work to pay for the courses. (You need a minimum of a B for reimbursement) My first final was way easier than I expected, and other than having to deal with some registration issues at the testing center (they didn't have my student id, so the test wouldn't load), I breezed through that final in less than 15 minutes. Way easier than I expected. My second final was an essay one, and it took me a little over an hour to complete. When I walked out of there, I felt like I was so dead because the questions were on things I hadn't studied as much. Out of 7 questions, I knew I got about 3.5 right. I completely blanked on one, and had absolutely no clue on another. I guess I came up with good enough answers as I ended up getting 38/40 on this final. go figure. The prof said he was curving the test, so I guess that's my curved score. I don't really know my raw score.