so i was going to write a post today that was kind of trigged by something jim mckee wrote on his website. but it was an insanely long day and i wrote a response to something that jl4 wrote that was so long it was rude. and i'm kinda typed out. so i won't do justice to the topic that jim triggered.

so what was going on today? i'm an i.t. geek. about 2 years ago my company grew enough that we needed a new email solution. at that time we presented solutions "a" and "b". we weren't really tied to one, but as the guys responsible for the health and security of the network we liked solution "a" a little better. much more secure and stable. all the same features, just in a slightly different way. well, the boss jumped on "a" when he saw the price. never looked at any of the demos we set up. we rolled it out and the first time he used it he hated it. this is the head of the i.t. department. we offered to give him the same email client he was used to using, so that it would be transparent to him, but he wouldn't do it. so less than two years ago we spent a decent amount of money on one solution, and because he didn't like it, we're now rolling out solution "b". for a ton more money. so now we're scrambling to get it deployed and to secure it because of unrealistic time limits imposted on us. and i'm the project manager as well as lead worker bee. joy-joy.

before i went to iraq i bought a new laptop. something small and light to be easy to carry. when i came home in october it failed. sam's club was awesome. although wal-mart scares the hell out of me, sam's club has been awesome to me. even though they lost money on the deal, the took back the laptop, absorbed the loss and let me swap it for another. the new laptop hasn't been such a good thing. since i've had it the case has cracked, the keyboard has failed the power supply has failed, the trackpad has worn so smooth that it couldn't be used, the system board failed and the media wasn't included in the box when i bought it. a couple weeks ago i sent it in for the trackpad repair. when it came back the screen had two or three tiny cracks in it. i contacted the manufacturer and asked them if they were going to cover the repairs of if they needed to file a claim with the shipper. they told me to ship it back (AGAIN!). i sent it back and it came back today supposedly repaired. well, in addition to NOT being repaired, it's missing memory. i purchased a 1GB memory upgrade that's now missing.

of course i called and complained and in their defense, they offered to replace the laptop after all of the problems i've had. i don't know if this means i get a new model or if they've got refurbed models of of what i've got sitting on the shelf someplace. but the condition of this was that i had to provide receipts for both the laptop purchase and the memory purchase. do you know how hard it is to come up with receipts that you took to iraq with you? let me say how wonderful new egg is. even though i bought the memory over a year ago they still had a receipt i could print out online. and sam's club? they can't find an individual receipt for the laptop so they're going to print out my ENTIRE purchase history for me. hopefully that'll be ready tomorrow or sunday.

i ordered a heated liner for my motorcycle today. a couple years ago when i was mobilized for the first time i commuted between denver and a base about an 1.5-2 hrs away. great ride during warm weather, but there were winter commutes when it was so cold i'd have to stop every 15 minutes or so and warm my hands by putting them on the engine block and i'd have to scrape frozen condensation off the inside of my face shield from my breath. i'm loving the sportster and the ride to and from work helps relieve so much stress. i don't want to give that up just because the mercury is dropping a little. for my sanity the 200 bucks is hopefully money well spent.

so after a 13 hr work day, and a run and assorted pushup and situps and dinner and the long-assed reply on jl4's site my brain is pretty much tapioca.

night.