For your entertainment, and a PSA

Quoted from a status update I was given at work today. Names have been changed to protect the guilty.

" . . . so here . . . I sit with [Tim] from [the company that produces our key-card security access software] on the phone, biting nails and hoping they have figured out how we can change the [administrator] password for the server and the controllers. Not sensing a lot of confidence but [Tim] insists (several if not too many times) that no one has ever asked to do this before . . . "

And, just as a PSA, lots of software you never think about has an administrator password that comes pre-set to a default. Sometimes, the default is blank. You should, generally, change this to avoid being cracked. The administration interface for your standard DSL or cable modem, for example, or j-random wireless router that you use at home . . .

Everything you know is wrong.

Or at least, everything I know about my feet, I guess.

The latest shoe-buying debacle resulted in my buying hiking boots and discovering that when I actually wear them for a reasonable length of time, my right foot rotates and angles in such a way that it puts an unbearable amount of pressure on the right side of my foot. This isn't the kind of thing you break in. My chiropractor suggested that it might be a defective shoe, and I should at least go back and talk to the place I bought it from.

So last night, I went in and told them I thought I had either a defective shoe or a defective foot, and I was open to suggestions for how to deal with either. I described the problem, and the first thing the nice young lady asked me was, "Have you had a foot fit?" Turns out, either whoever was helping me didn't usually work in the boots section of the store, or I slipped through the cracks somehow--they should have done some serious measuring of my feet before they let me walk out with boots. So, regardless of the problem boot being worn outside, they're going to do 80% of the cost back in store credit on a pair that fit correctly.

So this nice young lady measures my feet . . . and it turns out, I have a narrow foot. I've been wearing wide shoes for years because standard ones usually aren't comfortable (I have to buy a longer size to accomodate my foot) or I can't physicially squeeze my foot into them. But she measured each foot twice. A+ (on an A-D scale). I have narrow feet. Whatever it is that causes my feet to just not fit well in standard-width shoes, it's not the actual width.

We're still in process; we ran out of time, yesterday. So far I've tried a pair that I couldn't lock down my heel in and a pair that fit really well but didn't have enough ankle support. The style that I had before (that might be right except probably shouldn't be in a wide width), they didn't have in a useful size. So the nice young lady has me coming back tonight, at which point she hopes to have shoes in from another store and hopefully more ideas.

Wish me luck. I have to have something comfortably broken in by Rites.

Leavin' on a jet plane . . .

I did go ahead and pre-register for Rites. And ask for a ride from the Albany airport. Hopefully I can come up with some better alternative, but just in case, I decided I'd better work with a worst-case scenario.

Right now, it's $225 to fly into Boston and $300+ to fly into Albany (depending on if I take a red-eye or not). That's already up about $25 since the last time I looked. And yet, it would save so much more trouble if someone can give me a ride that I think I'm going to wait another week or two, keep an eye on airfares, and hope I get a lead on a ride in time to purchase a plane ticket to the most useful city.

Quote of the Week

"Don't walk behind me; I may not lead. Don't walk in front of me; I may not follow. Walk beside me that we may be as one."

--source unknown; attributed to the Ute tribe

Rites of Confusion

Here it is, time to register for Rites again . . . and I find I don't know what to do.

Past years' routine has been to pre-register and purchase a plane ticket out to Boston for the Saturday or Sunday before Village Builders. From there, I could hitch a ride to and from the festival with my brother and be assured of crash space on both sides.

All of a sudden, this year, my brother's not 100% sure he's going. And it's hard to pin a plane ticket on "I think so." Even if he does go, I don't know if he's going to have room for me--it was a pretty tight squeeze to fit all our stuff last year. And if I can't ride with him, there's no real reason to fly into Boston. I'm hoping to get some e-mail addresses of other folks who go to the Village Builders' and see if any of them would have room for a stray, but so far, I haven't been able to lay hands on any. If I can, I may want to fly into some other city, entirely.

Albany is the closest airport to the site, but it's more expensive to fly into. Worth it if it cuts two hours of bus ride out of the trip, but it still means bus fare and then cab fare to actually get to the site, unless someone can pick me up from the airport or the bus station.

Complicating things, some of the expenses from the Disneyland trip just finally came through in this month's credit card bill. It's pricey enough to register and fly into Boston. If the airfare goes up because I'm flying into Albany, I keep looking at it and thinking that I really can't justify the expense. But then again, Rites has never been a matter of "justifying" for me.

One upside of pre-reg not resulting in much of a discount this year is that I wouldn't feel horrible if I had to wait until the regular registration period. The plane ticket is the sticking point, and that will start getting more expensive very soon, now. I haven't had to panic about transportation in some years. I'd almost forgotten how much I hate it.

The idea of being there and my brother not is a little weird. I think I'd still go. But if, say, the vikings I hang out with weren't going . . . that'd be a tough choice. I no longer get much out of a lot of the more basic workshops, so half the reason I go is to hang out with friends.

I shouldn't make decisions when I feel this way. But it's really, really hard to wait.

I am the anti-Sedona.

Well, maybe not entirely. But the trip was a complete bust. The drive was closer to three hours than two from Pete's place. The pictures we'd seen of the potential wedding venue must have been some years old, because it had sprouted fancy sculptures in places that make it completely unusable for our purposes. The park I thought would have better hiking turned out to have a 3/8 mile nature trail, and that was it. The views were beautiful . . . where you could find them, because mostly, you were knee deep in yuppie strip malls.

New Age pilgrims, I expected. Yuppies and their larvae, I did not.

Oh well. My mother is going to call our next tier of three choices for wedding venue--all shaded courtyards appropriate for an evening or after dark wedding here in Tucson--in this next week, with an eye to their policies on lighting and candles and music and fees. It's not that I can't make phone calls from work, it's that where I work, we tend to stay so busy that I simply forget to. So I enlisted her assistance. Also, it looks like we've found an afternoon that will actually work for all five parties invited (or suckered?) into the poofy dress expedition: me, my maids of honor, and both mothers (bride's and groom's). So I'm at least feeling a little more positive about things than I was when we left Sedona.

Quote of the Week

"I used to think it was awful that life was so unfair. Then I thought, wouldn't it be much worse if life were fair and all the terrible things that happen to us come because we actually deserve them. So now I take great comfort in the general hostility and unfairness of the Universe."

--Marcus Cole

Quote of the Week

"Until he extends his circle of compassion to all living things, man will not himself find peace."

--Albert Schweitzer

The truth will out.

Common sense isn't.

. . . or, "The Care and Feeding of Printers."

The inkjet printers we deploy at work will take two different black ink cartridges: an HP 21 and an HP 27. I was recently informed by the user of one such that she was always careful to order the 21s, because they were cheaper.

To my thinking, this is like being offered, say, two apparently-identical chocolate easter bunnies. One costs a dollar and one costs eighty-five cents, and they're both made by the same company and sold at the same store. Before buying the one that costs eighty-five cents, I would ask: Why? Maybe it's just me, but I would find it to be an obvious question.

In this case, the answer is that the the chocolate bunny is hollow. That 21 cartridge holds half the ink that the 27 does at 5/6 of the price. But it never occurred to her to wonder, let alone ask.

I know that not everyone's been lucky enough to be taught the critical thinking skills that I have. But . . . isn't there a line here that's just common sense?