Misreply.org

Part 1: http://www.misreply.org/2008/drunken-fury-part-1-the-ordination/
Part 2: http://www.misreply.org/2008/drunken-fury-the-penn-years-part-2/

Unsure whether I should laugh or wince in pain, I got up from my fetal position on Bill’s bed. I looked up and Firn was still holding that damned chair above my head. “Dude…really…”, I barely made out in between fits of laughter, “chill”. Twice now had that chair been dropped on my head. The first was a sucker punch of sorts; I really wasn’t expecting him to actually do it. Bill egged him on a second time, as my egg shaped head met the cloth of the backrest yet again. Once for each case, Firn, good job.

“Why are we in here, my room is like six times the size.”
“Yea good point…I really have no idea, I just wanted to bust Bill’s balls about Diablo.”
“The kid failed Calc because of that game, and you are going to continue to torture him about it?”…I paused a bit and realized the comedy of my own statement, “Yea…good point.”

This seemed to be the trend that year. While it was in no way a regular occurrence, the few nights of debauchery that we had were well worth the year at Penn by themselves. This particular time, the second of our aptly named “Drunken Fury” get-togethers, happened to end with a chair on my head, and a session of Quake (You can truly tell a geek when some semblence of geekdom can shine through even after consuming enough booze to drown a small country).

A few weeks before that, Ryan’s girlfriend (actually,she was already his fiancee at the time…now an ex) had come up from Florida to visit us to celebrate our birthdays. Older than me by two weeks, her birthday being on the first of February and mine on the 16th, she decided to visit in between those two dates to bear witness to the genesis of Drunken Fury.

Preparations had been going on for the last week or so for this event. It was a typical faux Philadelphia winter; temperature varying from the uncanny 70 degree days in January to the negative 5 degree temperatures that week…but no snow. There’s just something not right about a NorthEast winter without snow…

“But dad, I want to build a fortress!”, I screamed as I looked at the four feet of snow outside.
“Yea…well, first you have to get the damned door open.”
After a few minutes of pushing, I stepped outside and breathed in the cool crisp air. I’d add “clean” to that list, but we’re in Philly, not Montana, and your chances of finding clean air are about as likely as getting the opportunity to bang Megan Fox tonight (unless you are banging Megan Fox tonight…in which case, I hate you). At age 11, wrapped up in three layers of clothing, a heavy waterproof jacket, hat, gloves, and boots, there is really nothing better than diving into a four foot mound of soft fresh snow. I don’t think anything else during the Blizzard of ’94 was more fun than that day in Fishtown.

That is the feeling that was missing that day. A cold February morning, no snow on the ground, just the knowledge that the days are going to be short and boring…but at least we had a dorm fridge full of Heineken, a bottle of Grey Goose, a fifth of Captain Morgan, and the loveliest liquor of them all: Bombay Sapphire.

“You going to help me with this shit?”, asked Ryan as I lazily looked up from whatever book it was that I happened to be reading.
“What are you talking about?”
“My TV…moving it in here.”
“Oh yea…give me a sec.”

Of the four of us at VP-313, Ryan tended to be the most impulsive of us all. In 2001, having a high definition TV was symbolic of godliness, so of course he had to have one. It arrived on a Saturday morning, and I felt bad for the Best Buy guys that had to carry the 150 pound juggernaut up three flights of stairs, as our dorm had no elevators. Helping carry it during move-out day, and subsequently moving it to my room at Doyne’s a few years later, I now know the torture those brave men faced. It’s not that it was really all that heavy, but it was unbalanced. What did you expect…it was a CRT, with heavy glass in the front, and oddly shaped plastic all around. A CRT…unheard of these days, but it was high def, goddamit (Not that the original XBox, Dreamcast, Gamecube, or the PS2 that we collectively owned would take advantage of it).

I felt bad for Bill…I really did. His girlfriend was over that night, so he wasn’t even able to fully enjoy the get together. Additionally, her random button mashing in Soul Calibur was coasting her to easy victories against Bill. I never really understood the term “whipped” until I saw the extent to which their relationship took it.

“Ok, who wants beer and who wants liquor?”, I asked as I grabbed a Heineken.
“Nothing for me”, replied Bill as Ryan grabbed the Bombay and poured it into a Styrofoam cup, filling it.
Everyone looked at Bill, anxious for his followup, “She’s not letting me drink yet.”

After fifteen minutes, Bill walked back into the room, followed by his girlfriend. Sharpie marker in hand, she laid out her terms. “He gets to have one drink, but I’m going to write shit all over his face.” As funny as we found it that she drew a few down arrows and boldly wrote “small penis” on his forehead, I wasn’t sure whether I was laughing at the sight of this or the sadness of the state of affairs. How could he let her do that…a man has to have some limits.

I took out the Italian Rum Cake my mom bought me and placed it on the chair. Within minutes, the sheer amount of rum in that cake had begun to seep through the box, staining the chair. “Well… I guess I’m not sitting on that one.”

We ate cake…then they left. I honestly did not even notice if Bill washed his face or not before leaving.

November 4th is quickly approaching, and the final debate between Obama and McCain took place last night. Many people are still undecided, some refuse to vote, while others defend their candidate with an almost annoying enthusiasm. That being said, there are a few things that generally annoy me about people.

1. Single issue voters. OH COME ON NOW! While I completely agree with the right for everyone to cast a vote, sometimes I feel that there should be some kind of common sense exam before one may vote. Just recently, a long-time friend of mine told me “you know…I agree with Obama on pretty much everything. I would get a pretty decent tax cut, and I think he is definitely better at foreign policy…hell, better at dealing with people in general than McCain could ever be, hell the last eight years sucked, and McCain is more of the same!”. I almost felt the but coming, but I decided to pre-empt it “So, you’ve made your choice already, I see…Go-Bama?”. “Nah, McCain dude….I like my guns.” Seriously…are you shitting me? While I chose to highlight this particular example, I have heard many such variations, except replace Obama with McCain, McCain with Obama, guns with abortion, foreign policy with the economy, and every variation thereof. “So do you know [Candidate X]‘s plan for [major national issue]?”. I asked…”Nah, but he is for [single controversial yet minor issue that won't affect the state of the nation or how it is perceived in the world], so…you know…”. Seriously, people, before you go out on November 4th, educate yourself on the issues. Don’t just watch Fox News/MSNBC, or read each party’s talking points. Give it some independent thought, some personal insight; read summaries of actual bills and proposals from the candidates instead of relying on the attacks the candidates make against each other, or their defenses.

2. Tying in somewhat with issue 1…lack of education regarding the actual policies of the candidates. As much as I would like to be able to be impressed by the inherent wisdom of my acquaintances, it is simply not the case; the majority (sadly) have not taken any initiative to become politically smart. They don’t see past the attacks, the talking points and the pundits “expert analysis” of the issues (of which the majority are party biased, depending on the station’s affiliation), and should not taint the Democratic process by blindly voting.

I don’t care who you vote for. I don’t care whether or not you will go straight Democrat, straight Republican, or vote for every possible independent candidate. Your vote is your vote, but please…make it an educated one. Don’t follow your friend’s advice, don’t vote for [Candidate X] because your parents want you to, and don’t vote for the entire package based on one tear in the wrapping paper.

But do make a difference.

Narrative:
* a message that tells the particulars of an act or occurrence or course of events
* the systematic recitation of an event or series of events

Blog
* a Web site that contains an online personal journal with reflections, comments, and often hyperlinks provided by the writer

Like personal Twitter accounts, many blogs exist on the internet solely to act as validation for the author. Really, Bob, I don’t care that you went to the store today and bought cereal, nor do I care that you enjoyed last night’s episode of [whatever]. Granted, some people use them as an outlet to vent or to organize their thoughts. It’s the 21st Century version of “my secret diary”, except for the whole secret part.

Other blogs, on the other hand, have some narrative substance. Some are a joy to read. These authors have a vivid imagination, exceptional writing skills, and the ability to convey their thoughts to print. Do these outlets for storytelling still technically count as blogs, or are they in a class of their own? I don’t know, nor am I an authority to make such a classification. I’m sure you have your own opinion.

“Let me tell you what I heard today about Apple/Microsoft/etc … “, comments Bob, pretending to be an expert in the technological field, “it’s going to change technology as we know it”. On another site, probably even hosted on the same server, Sally writes: “…and today the polls show…”.

This brings me to one of the biggest paradoxes on the internet: news blogs. Finally, some real-world applicable substance… Is it still technically a blog if it’s written by a respected journalist…is the “blogosphere” an actual news outlet? It’s tough to say, and it depends who you ask. You will get answers ranging from a simple “it’s a blog” to “the blogosphere is real, aliens are coming!”. Personally, I consider news blogs to be a separate category. It’s news…but at the same time it’s someone’s personal interpretation of an event. Is that really any different from someone’s personal interpretation as it would appear on the front page of the New York Times?

When it comes down to it, I wholeheartedly support anyone that takes time out of their day to write. It doesn’t matter if they write political commentary, what they did the day before, their problems with significant others, or if they publish a book. Writing is becoming a lost art. I see the aggregate writing levels decreasing, and it worries me. Throughout the day, I read a lot of technical documentation: Technical documentation written by co-workers, documentation for software, and various miscellaneous web sites. Honestly, some of these are painful to read. I, admittedly, am a grammar Nazi, and I pay attention to elements of grammar as I read documentation. It pains me to see college graduates write the way they do. I feel that if they have the opportunity to write more often, then they should; their writing will improve greatly.

So I say: Read…read all you can so that you can become a better writer by example. Write blog posts, write narratives, write books, write letters. Write…write all you can.

September 19th was my last day of work at (company a). As I looked at my desk, now empty, I felt a strange sensation. It wasn’t regret, happiness, nerves, or nostalgia…but some odd combination of them all.

Most employees at (company) didn’t even know I was leaving that day until I sent my final goodbye email. I told my boss who went to his boss and HR, but for the most part, a limited number of people knew. Robin knew, Aaron knew, and Ryan knew. I kept it low key; no need to introduce more drama into a workplace filled with a plethora of it.

During the previous few weeks, I had been quietly scoping out other employment opportunities. In a chance encounter with a roller hockey buddy, he told me that he was leaving his position at (company b) to work for Lockheed Martin, and that (company b) was looking for a good IT guy. He asked me for my resume, which I happily provided, and waited.

I started at (company a) about four years ago. I was originally a part-time employee assisting Modo with the Broadcast portion of the company’s technological resources. I was still in college, and my internship with Comcast had just ended when Modo approached me asking if I was interested in working for his company. His co-worker had just quit, and he was having a difficult time managing everything on his own. He couldn’t take days off or go on a vacation as he was the only IT resource at corporate. Seeing as my source of income had just come to an end, I agreed to come in for an interview. Leaving out a bunch of superfluous details: I got the job offer fairly quickly and thus began my tenure.

I didn’t dislike (company a), nor was I unhappy while I was there. The degrees of freedom offered by the position and the cool attitude of most of the people made work fun for the most part, as long as there was something to do. Sure, a lot of the time, I was dealing with minuscule user issues that were “urgent emergencies”, but the rest of the time was either free time or project time. In reality, I could do what I wanted, come and go as I please, work from home if I needed to, and my drive was fairly short (minus I-76 traffic, of course).

I didn’t dislike my co-workers, despite some differences in how we did things. There was always a difference in what was considered “best practices” between Core and corporate. For the most part, while discussions would get heated over stupid shit, nobody held a grudge (well..hopefully, I can only speak for myself) despite both sides being stubborn and insistent.

For the most part…life was good, but; it was time to move on. My position never really had any kind of official title. I was the jack of all trades; the everything IT bitch. If it lit up, made beeping noises…hell, if it used electricity, it somehow fell under my domain. I felt that it was time for a change…to move into a position that has more clearly defined goals and responsibilities…something that (company b) offered.

To the peons at corporate: Was cool hanging out and talking to you on a daily basis. You will be missed…and I still owe you donuts.
To the towers peons: Good luck…damn, you’ll probably need it (your words, not mine!)
To the peons in Austin: Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.

Damn…no posts in September. I’m really slipping here. I have some posts started, but I haven’t actually finished any writing.

Lots of new news involving cars, jobs, friends and other randomness…just no time to write anything in detail about it.

Soon…

I added another log to the fire. Fuck, my intricate pyramid of half burned logs, embers, and fresh wood collapsed under the weight of one of the legs. Sitting there alone, I didn’t feel any dire need to immediately rearrange the logs. It’s past midnight and everyone had already gone to sleep… Pussies. “This fire will burn till morning”, I said to myself as I took another sip of Sprite Zero. Why not, right…we had all this extra wood that we bought, and it was our last night camping.

“What the hell are you going to be doing out there?”, I was asked on many an occasion. It’s not something that can easily be explained: the attraction of sleeping in a tent on uneven ground in the middle of nowhere. But why explain myself, or try to rationalize to others the appeal, as I looked down the road and saw an entire line of tents.

It was time away from home, away from the office. I’d say away from the family, but they were right here with me. I took two days off from work and as a spur of the moment decision, made a reservation for a campground spot just days before I left.

What does one do…beside eat, drink, go to the beach, play volleyball, and sit around a campfire….sometimes most of the above at once? This is the life…away from everything and everyone that pisses you off on a daily basis, away from the business of day-in and day-out monotony; Away from the mundane repertoire that is repeated every day for no real rhyme or reason other than maintaining the status quo of the appearance of normality. Out here, I don’t need to think, I don’t need to care, I don’t need to worry or stress. I will have plenty of time for that when I return, so I might as well enjoy a few days away from it all.

I haven’t taken a real vacation in a while. Most vacations that one takes, require another week of rest after returning because one does not ever “relax” on vacations. No, typical vacations involve going somewhere and doing stuff. Last year, I went on a cruise to Canada. A cruise, one might expect, to be full of laziness and booze, but in reality, I was busy for every minute aboard the ship, and even moreso off it. With shows and swimming, between boat rides, walks, shops, and other typical touristy shit, I came back more exhausted than when I left. At least I didn’t have to be at work….but fuck it if they STILL didn’t find a way to get in touch with me because of some mess that they made that nobody else could fix.

I need a vacation…

Ok. I was just watching True Lies, and there was a commercial for Aussi hair gel or something like that. The WTF part: the method of procuring this hair care product was by assulting a purple kangaroo while it was getting a massage and having a bottle of Aussie fly out of its ass. Yes, a purple kangaroo and bottles flying out of asses. No I was not dreaming. W…… T….. F.

So I caved and bought an iPhone to replace my broken blackberry. So I also became an app whore and downloaded a bunch of apps including the wordpress app. So here is a test post from it. I wish more apps supported landscape view
, especially these: ones that involve a lot of typing.

“Mind if I sit here as I wait for my to-go order to come out?”
“Sure, please…”, I said as I motioned toward the chair across from my table at Po-Boys Factory.
“So, where are you from?”, she asked.

Is it that transparent that I’m not from around here? Well…yes, of course it is, but the thought still struck me as a tad funny.

What ensued next surprised me, being a seventeen year citizen of Philadelphia; a friendly conversation with a complete stranger. This says something about the people around here: They are friendly. This is not exactly something I’m completely used to, living in Philadelphia all these years. From the moment I arrived in AL, I haven’t met anyone that is rude, pushy, arrogent, or even not smiling. I’m beginning to like it around here.

Anyway, back to Asterisk, as that is the primary reason for my being here.

Today, as the rest of the week will be, was an early day. Instead of the comfy 9:30am arrival time of yesterday, and in order to accommodate the amount of material that needs to be covered, training now begins at 8:30. Even though AL is a timezone behind, I did not feel like leaving my bed at all. The snooze button is your friend….numerous times over.

Finally, I managed to convince myself that I actually DO have to get up. Splashing some water on my face, I finally sprang to life. Due to the previously mentioned snooze-button-fest, I didn’t have time for breakfast (Oh, but that Waffle House down the street looks so inviting!) before leaving for the glass house that is the Digium HQ.

Ok, now to Asterisk…really this time.

Today we started to really dive into the core of *. We set up voicemails, learned how to deal with prompts and inputs, and setup some SIP and IAX (that’s pronounced eeeks, like geeks) trunks. The technology behind VoIP is actually quite wonderful, albeit somewhat flawed, especially when it comes to NAT setups.

This makes me wonder, actually, how our phone system at work functions at all. The ASA we have is pretty locked down, yet taking a linksys or Polycom phone home seems to work without needing a VPN. Either the ASA is pretty smart, or Scott opened up all UDP traffic to the Asterisk box. I’m going to have to check the access-lists when I get back, because if all UDP traffic is wide open, somebody is going to have some words.

The day was long; we didn’t finish the training until about 6:10 or so. At the end of it, though, I was not bored of sitting in a classroom, nor was I tired of Asterisk. Twelve step program, here I come.: “My name is Luke and I’m becoming an Aster-holic”. I realize that it takes a very specific kind of geek to actually enjoy writing code for phone systems. It’s unique, although C programmers, web developers, et al would also argue that their art is unique. I digress, however, arguing that programmers and developers have typically written code to serve one particular purpose, whether it be a financial application, a video game, or a web site. In turn, they would argue that I am “just” configuring a phone system, but I think it’s so much more. Asterisk doesn’t have a singular purpose; it’s not just a call router, just an IVR, simply a mechanism to send outbound calls over, or just a voicemail system. It’s all of that, and more. I don’t think that in a week, I’ll come close to realizing the full potential of it, but in just two days I have gained a completely different appreciation for it…and we haven’t even gotten to the fun stuff!

The key difference is the fun in learning. Anytime I learned a programming language, it was very systematic, and each one was for the most part similar. Phone systems are a different beast; their code isn’t like any typical programming language, although AEL helps people with programming backgrounds (like myself) ease into the role. Sure, developers can put some easter eggs in their code, but how many IDEs have a built in sound that says “weasels have eaten our phone system”, or “our phone system has been overrun by iguanas”, or a collection of monkey noises? How many of them would actually be willing to put that into production code? Rest assured that my extension at work will soon be filled with fun stuff (until some stickler VP decides to ruin my fun). I can only imagine what Allison was thinking when the Digium folks asked her to record some of these prompts, but the on-site hilarity must have been incredible. Come to think of it…who the hell actually even came up with some of the things for her to say…if I ever meet this person, I need to buy them a beer or something.

Anyway, that’s all for now. As I learn more fun Asterisk stuff, maybe I’ll post some code segments, or try to dissect our setup at work based on what I am learning here.

Read more from the Digium guys themselves at http://blogs.digium.com. Some of it may not make sense to normal people, but it’s a fun read nonetheless.

Also…I apparently have a nickname now at Digium…Luke the Blogger. I guess somebody there has an alarm setup for any WP posts that have asterisk/digium in the title :)

The beauty of having a blog with no set purpose is the ability to write about anything I want. I don’t have to confine myself to tech articles, sob stories, essays or stories from my past.

Today, I write about a little something called *.

Asterisk is an open source PBX that runs on top of UNIX-based operating systems. It is developed primarily by a company called Digium, whose headquarters are in Huntsville, Alabama.

While the state of Alabama isn’t exactly known for its technical prowess, I must say that I was more than impressed with Huntsville. It wasn’t all farms, plains, or BBQs. The buildings in Huntsville are all very modern…very “techy” looking. For example, look at the Digium headquarters…looks pretty nice, eh?

So why Asterisk? My work has been running an Asterisk phone system since January, and until recently it was maintained by one of our peons in Texas. This particular peon no longer wanted to have anything to do with the phone system because he is busy with everything else (aka, Core network, WoW and consulting for other firms [yea, I know...]). So basically, since this transition was still done under the old Regime, he got away with dumping the administration of * onto Ryan and I. Neither of us knew anything about asterisk at the time the project was thrown onto our laps. Studying peon’s config files and using some quick documentation he wrote (simple doesn’t even begin to describe it), we managed to keep the old system alive for a decently long time. The server, however, was never meant to handle the call center AND the corporate phones, and was in dire need of an upgrade. Since it was still running asterisk 1.2, we wanted to have the current 1.4 version running on the new server. Not knowing much about asterisk would have made this particular project close to impossible. Ryan was sent for training first, taking my spot because of my prior conflicting arrangements. Using his newfound knowledge, my ingenuity, and some late nights, we were able to transition (fairly) smoothly to the new server. All the problems that we had in 1.2 went away; no more echos in the phones, no more crashes of the box. We did, however, introduce a couple of new problems, but those bugs were quickly squashed.

Fast forward to today. The current asterisk implementation is running. We have queue_metrics setup and running. However, as in any great company…or any company, actually; redundancy is key. We needed a second person to have enough asterisk knowledge to be a primary for the system. That…would be me.

So here I am, sitting in a Holiday Inn in Huntsville, Alabama. Day one of training is over. Asterisk is compiled on my machine at the Digium HQ, a simple dialplan is active, and I’m full of hot wings and pulled pork from dinner.

Huntsville isn’t so bad after all. I expected much worse…but I must say two things:
1. Southern belles DO exist (Hey, blond from the plane…call me. Blond from the Digium HQ…you too).
2. Being alone here; I’m pretty fricken bored.