~wolphin

Catching up on FA today, I had a thought and just had to pass on my thanks and gratitude to all the artists out there who must get so many oddball requests and just take them in their stride.

Sure, there would be plenty of "this is a character, can you draw them in this style pose", but my heart goes out to the artists who must get plenty of "can you draw this character, in this pose, with this very specific kink." requests. Which of course, if drawn well, would lead to much of the same.

In the back of my mind I have mental images of artists resizing the canvas to for the equine proportions in going, "Sunflowers, some folks have made a lot of money drawing just sunflowers. Just some pollen on sunflowers, small yellow dots, no need to know fluid dynamics with sunflowers..."

So to all the artists out there, thanks!

Just to add to my last post about it being a year. Last Sunday we had a cyclone come through town. This is not one of the things I had on my list. Luckily we fared pretty well here, didn't have any power for three days. Next town up pretty much got wiped out though. I can at least cross "be in a cat 3 cyclone" off the list of things to do now though.

It's been a year since I've said anything and what a year it was! There were a few things that happened in the past twelve months or so, you may have seen it on the news. Yeap, The diet caffeine free diet coke has been moved to coke no sugar and its just not the same. Yeap, big changes.

There were a few other things, I'm sure if you ask, I can probably remember what they were. Hopefully all are doing well though!

It looks like I am down to annual posts at this rate. Thought I'd post an update saying I'm still alive. Still living close to the middle of nowhere. Experimentation involving orca mutations have not yet taken hold, but a scientist should not give up with a few unsuccessful attempts. Displacer enhancements are still looking promising.

I do need to write more, I know that. I probably need to get more commissions too. Always like some commissions. That's about all I have to say currently. Any questions, insights or pearls of wisdom to be offered by others?

I just noticed it's been a year since I put in a journal article, so must be time to do another one. So, umm, what to say? Any questions? Anyone, anyone?

I'm still plugging away at work. Pretty much over my current job. I put the fear of god into my boss a while ago when I applied for another job, but didn't get it. The side effect was my boss suddenly got afraid of me leaving and his solution to that is to shower projects on me. Which wouldn't be too bad, I like getting my hands on a project, except I can't see any specific purpose other than it ticks a box.

So yeah, keeping my eye out for something more inviting and then hopefully I get to run away, which would feel so good. I have an urge to do a US con, no idea which one or when, but it would be nice. I need a break I think.

Need to do more writing too, Unfortunately, I think my muse has been sleeping a lot lately. Don't blame them either, I think I'll go and join them too.

Ciao!

I just got back from a 2.5week US trip. It started with a wedding in Wyoming, That was pretty much a family thing, but I got to wander around Laramie and oogle at everyone wearing Cowboy merchandise.

After that, I got a lift down to Denver, just staying in one of the airport hotels before flying down to Vegas. The airport hotels in Denver are surreal. They're just on a road from the airport and it's suddenly about a dozen chain hotels in the middle of nowhere. I walked along the road and it's just hotels and a few food places, but completely isolated from everything else, like you're in quarantine on the prairie.

When I told people I was going to Vegas, everyone went "oooh Vegas" accompanied by knowing winks and nods. The real reason I was going to Vegas is because it's the easiest airport in the area to get to. I had a day and a bit in Vegas before Kreggan arrived, so I did lots of wandering around. Been about 10 years since I've been there - it's still over the top and I still didn't get up to Fremont Street.

Kreggan drove down from Cali to join me, which was very cool since all the Americans drive on the wrong side of the road and have some bizarre road rules at times.

Aside from seeing the Grand Canyon, I had no idea what the plan was. So we did Hoover Dam, drove a section of Route 66 and ended up on the South Rim of the Grand Canyon. It is a hole in the ground - a very big hole in the ground. It is rather impressive. The south rim is the main tourist hub, we covered a big chunk of it, then did the bits we missed out on the following day.

We spent the night in Page in Arizona and went through Antelope Canyon the following day. It was pretty cool, probably avoid it if you're claustrophobic - a narrow, deep, twisting and turning rock canyon, most of the time you can't see the sky above you, lovely forms and shapes to the rock though. I didn't think we'd get to see the north rim, but Kreggan was determined, so we made it there at about 4pm.

It is hugely different to the south rim. It's 2000 feet high and feels more like a Swiss ski lodge. Less people too which is always a good thing. You have too book months in advanced to stay there, so we spent the night further north.

The next day we did Zion Canyon, which is pretty impressive, this time you're in the canyon and admittedly it's a lot smaller than the Grand Canyon, but you're surrounded by these impressive mountains on all sides.

We had plans to spend the night about an hour out of Vegas, but everywhere we tried was booked out for some sort of car thing, so we spent another night in Vegas. That in itself was weird. We stayed in a standard overnight business hotel - a Holiday Inn for memory - no slot machines in sight. Very unlike Vegas.

Next stop was Death Valley. It's big and was very hot. Was not what I imagined at all. I never knew there were actual towns in it. (Ok, very very small towns) I have no idea why you would want to live there. (Let alone play golf - there is a golf course). Had a spectacular view headed out.

From there we made our way up to San Fransisco where I jumped on a plane and had the joy of a second 14 hour flight.

All up, about 2.5 weeks away, 2500km on a road trip, 6 separate flights and just under 50 hours in the air. I finished it up with another 5hr drive back home today. I'd love to sleep in tomorrow, but straight back to work. What fun.

I went for a walk today and claimed some pokemon gyms. Yes I know, I'm about a year behind the times. I also know with the new release getting a gym that is hard to get to is sort of pointless. That said, these two gyms have been bothering me for ages. Whoever logged the initial points, they are about 100m east of where they should be. This normally isn't too much of a problem, but to get to these you have to bash your way through about 100m of bush.

This is good old fashioned, thick Aussie bush, which means it is almost impenetrable and full of things with one inch spikes. I have shredded my legs and my jeans are now covered with blood spots, but I did claim the gyms. Probably means I'll get thrown out by someone with GPS exploits, but for the time being they're mine.

And because someone will probably wonder, no, I didn't see any snakes. Did stumble into a few golden orb spiders though. They're big, have strong, thick web and scare the bejeses out of you when you find them walking down your arm. They are harmless to humans though, except for inducing heart attacks.

http://www.arachne.org.au/_dbase_up.....lIMGSPIDER.jpg if anyone is curious, but maybe not if you don't like spiders. Yes that is a bird in it's web. No, I didn't take it. They're probably about palm sized.

Ok, something I've been mulling over lately. At what point does it become acceptable for a commissioner to start asking an artist about a commission?

I've got a couple of outstanding commissions. A few the artist has said they're busy/hectic/life has got in the way. Sure, I can understand that and don't mind. Some others I'm in the queue, so I don't mind those either. I do have one where I'm listed on their web page as being in the queue, but I've noticed they don't update their web page any more. I suspect they've moved to Trello or something, but I'm not sure.

I've got someone else where I'm listed in their Trello as "colouring" although I've never seen a preliminary and I've been being coloured now for about two months. And of course, then there is the famous Christmas commission. Maybe for Christmas this year...

I don't want to be that annoying commissioner who pokes and prods, I'm quite happy to wait, but by the same token, I don't want to be dropped off and forgotten about and when you haven't heard about anything for multiple months, it is hard not to wonder.

Got home from site today, drove into the carport and there is something on the gate by the fence. I get out of the car and it's a cat who was not happy to be there. Doing my best to keep it calm, I got up to it and it's foot has slipped down into the gap between the fence post and it's hanging there. I reach around behind the fence and there is blood on my hand and the cat not happy, so I visit next door to find out if it is their cat.

Not their cat, but neighbour comes over, I fetch a hammer and do my best to pry some of the palings loose while she holds the cat. Cat bites her, I get cat off her, loosened the boards off enough to be able to slide the leg up. I would have sworn the leg was at best dislocated or more likely broken, but that cat as soon as it's free, kicks, gets out of her hands, sprints down the driveway and away.

No problems with the way it was running. I had a look and there was some blood, but it was fresh and not that evil dark blood, not a huge amount either, so I think it was probably superficial. I hope it is at least. No collar or id on the cat either and it was dark, so it just disappeared into the night.

I hope its going to be ok, I was all prepared for a vet visit. Now instead I'm feeling guilty because it got my neighbour's hand pretty good. I'm wondering if it's poor form to buy her some chocolates in recognition and thanks (She's married, but I wouldn't have been able to do it by myself).

I also discovered that a) I know how to hold a cat so it can't bite you and b) when a cat does bite someone else, I know how to get it off of them. I am so much more a cat person than a dog person.

I haven't posted anything for a while and currently I'm sitting in my donga at site pretty much twiddling my thumbs, so you have to put up with some ramblings.

I work in Western Australia. If you look at a map of WA, you will notice there is a lot of nothing there. Every few weeks I'm sent out not quite to the middle of nothing, but slightly to the side.

I went for a walk this evening along the runway (yes we have a runway because we are that remote). Was a weird feeling. Normally wandering around here at night doesn't bother me, tonight just felt weird.

Was doing some mental calculations in my head. There are about 20 of us at site at the moment. Next closest humans are about 30km away at one of the local communities, about 80 people there. A couple of stations and not a lot else. All up, in a radius of about 200km there is probably less than 250 people.

There are not a lot of places on the planet that isolated. I know that I would not be able to live out here permanently. Which is weird, since I always consider myself an introvert, but I think I'm a social introvert, if there is such a thing. On the plus side, back to somewhat closer to civilization tomorrow. Yay!

Mainly because I was griping about it last week. When I got home from work on Friday, I checked my email (I often do when I travel back from site since I'm on the road for half a day). After doing the full server reboot thing. One machine was missing two of its network interfaces and another machine was not responding at all.

Today we managed to get them both up and going. The one with the missing network interfaces (it has six in case you're interested) was a pain, but they're all currently working as people like. I can't say as intended because I don't think they should work that way. The other machine that wasn't responding at all has a CPU error. It might be a one off or it could be something more fatal. I can't really tell from here and the remote management isn't set up correctly, so we got it up and working, but we'll need to wait until I'm out next time to look.

As I said to one of my co-workers. "It's working, back away... slowly. Do not make eye contact... do not make any sudden moves. Just fade slowly into the background..."

I was having a conversation with some other folks I know and up came the subject of tipping. They know I tend to get a reasonable amount of art and they asked me how much I tipped and were shocked when I said I don't tip. This then lead to a big discussion about tipping, wages and all that.

I'm in Australia. We don't tip and it annoys me when people do. We have a good minimum wage ($17.70Au/hr, which works out at $13.61US/hr). I got pizza delivered on Friday and the guy virtually ran away after he handed them over, he certainly wasn't expecting a tip. When I buy something, the price on the sticker is what I expect to pay (Yes, we don't have that tax thing either).

When it comes to commissions, if someone is offering to do a commission for $100, that's how much I expect to have to pay. I have full expectations that covers their time, materials, communication expenses, fees, charges, tax and all that. If it doesn't, they should up their charges. I do not expect the price to be $100 plus a mysterious amount to show my goodwill. If they expect a 10% tip, then charge $110, if they want a 20% tip, up it to $120.

I have had the argument that that makes them look more expensive than other people. No one should be expected to produce something at a loss. Companies sure don't. It is also not a level playing field. There are artists I know in California competing with someone in Wyoming, the cost of living is vastly different. I know a fur in Malaysia who does art. Believe me, those in the US are never going to compete on price with them.

The other argument I've heard is "if I up my prices, people won't commission me" Maybe. Chances are some people will drop out. They're the people who run around commissioning pics from everyone they possibly could. In my experience however, most people want a specific artist because of their style. People will still commission them because they want a pic by that artist.

It is an open market. An artist should be charging what they see as a fair and reasonable price. Does this mean everyone should suddenly start charging huge amounts? I hope not, but they should not be making a loss. Look at how long a picture takes, figure out how much you want to be charged per hour and use that as a base. Sketches take 2 hours, $25/hr is a reasonable rate for you. Allow 20% for fees and charges, you should be up around the $60 mark. You think it will take you four hours, be up over $100.

My characters are also fiddly. A snow leopard displacer beast. That means rosettes, tentacles, extra limbs. When asking for a commission, I always offer to pay extra because I know Snow can be a pain to draw. I don't see it as a tip, the artist tells me how much extra it will cost me, it is more of a negotiation; payment for their services.

If you are an artist and someone offers to tip you, I'm not saying turn it down, but by the same token, you shouldn't be advertising a price and hoping for something more. Never work for free, always make sure you are fairly paid.

After having things down at work for three days, finally got the word that my updates weren't responsible. An unlucky combination of unlucky and unforeseen factors that compounded together. They were able to reproduce it in the lab, should have a patch out soon which means I'll be able to sleep well tonight. My reboots were just coincidental, but probably helped to trigger it.

It's nice finding out you didn't break it. Well, you sort of did break it, but it wasn't your fault.

Bit of a rant here. Earlier this week the linux systems at work needed their rounds of update. They've been up for about 4 months, had some security kernel patches as well as the usual updates. I checked with the users, got the ok and went on an update and reboot fest.

Updates all went on, everything looked ok. I got on with my day. About six hours later, one of the users, "Umm, we're having a problem... we're not seeing certain UDP packets"

Without going into details about what this system is, it's big, complicated has big chunks of custom hardware and is run by this batch of servers which I had just upgraded and rebooted.

Ok, bit of a panic. Person tried it on another machine, still didn't work. Fingers starting to get pointed. Words "kernel upgrade" begin to strike fear into people's hearts. Ok, no probs, we'll boot the old kernel tomorrow and see what happens. Discover Debian doesn't keep a copy of the old kernel when upgrading minor versions (another reason for me to hate Debian).

At this point, am told it's probably a firmware problem on the device, since everything is seeing it. Hardware and firmware guys get involved, "No, we haven't touched our stuff, it's something at your end" End up having to get a backdated kernel from Debian snapshots. Boot a machine into that. Still doesn't work (actually it gets worse).

Looks like tomorrow we're running tcpdumps all over the place. I'm annoyed because I was the person who did the updates and the entire system was suppose to be down for about 30 minutes or so. In hindsight, what I should have done was to reboot a single server, get someone to check their stuff, then apply the updates, reboot and check again, then work through the servers.

Hindsight is a wonderful thing.

It's been a while since I posted anything so I thought I'd have some Friday night musings.

I'll start with health, since I've been seeing a lot of people talking about their health. I'm still alive. For those who came in late, September last year, I got pneumonia. I was out at site at the time. Site is considered to be remote, so I called the RFDS (Royal Flying Doctor Service) for medical advice. They asked me if I wanted to be evacuated, ie, they'd fly a plane in and fly me out. I said no and got authorisation to get some drugs from the medical chest. (We have a RFDS medical chest and doc can authorise you to get stuff from there if need me) In my case, it was just some ibuprofen.

Anyway, my boss started to drive me back to town. About halfway back I had to get him to stop because the pain was so bad. At that point I was going "I should have taken the evac option", my boss told me later he was thinking "I should have brought the oxygen" (Yes, we have oxygen at site). I made it home, went to the hospital, spent the night in emergency where they diagnosed me with pneumonia. They sent me home after filling me full of IV antibiotics. That was Tuesday night for memory. Friday night I was i a lot of pain and went back to emergency on Saturday. I expected them to give me another round of IV antibiotics and instead they put me into hospital for six days. Didn't really hit home until the doc told me "You are very sick. It is very serious"

I made a slow recovery. My right lung shrunk to about 2/3 its normal size. In January it was still shrunken. I've been doing gentle exercise and it's improving, but the doc pointed out at this point it was shrunken for so long I may have permanently lost some capacity. At least now it isn't hurting if I inhale deeply, still feels weird if I do something to exert myself, I pant, but just can't get in the volume of air my body wants. A weird feeling.

The other weird thing I have started about 18 months ago. I woke up on a Saturday morning and couldn't remember the previous week. It was just blank. I worked my way through my email and would see an email I had responded to and it would sort of pop into my head. That was another trip to hospital where they couldn't find anything and referred me to a neurologist.

Took me 9 months to see the neurologist. (Welcome to the rural health system) Ever since then I have been having these weird periods of dejavu or just strange tingles and goosebumps. The neurologist suspected seizures of the hippocampus and ordered a truckload of tests. Still waiting to find out the outcome of them. Apparently I'm seeing him the next time he visits town, no idea when that is. I'm a big believer in the no news is good news sort of thing. I suspect there might not be a lot they can do.

When I have one of these events I still function normally. No one has said they've noticed anything weird about me when I have one, but it's just weird. I'll be a lot happier if they can actually give me a good idea of what it is.

On the plus side, I blitzed in the memory test. I got 99/100. The only point I lost was because I was asked what the date was and glanced at my watch instinctively. The person giving the test was excited. Apparently a "high score" is usually about 30/100. That is pretty worrying.

If anyone has any brilliant ideas about how my brain works, let me know because it is seriously weird at the moment.

And after all that, that's probably enough, so I'll leave anything else for later. I'm out a site next week, might be a good time to have late night musings.

Well, I'm out at site again this week, which means its a week of 10 hour days followed by 5 hours before bed. I've done my evening walk up and down the runway, it's now 8pm and still 35C outside, so I've hunkered down in my donga with my laptop twiddling my thumbs until bedtime, so if anyone has any questions or wants to talk or has interesting political statements about the use of chocolate and ice cream, go ahead. I'm game, I'm here all week.

2016 is finishing here in a little over six hours, so the obligatory journal to let you know you're all awesome. I'm still alive and a happy New Year.

Anything I missed? On that note, I have some time to kill, so if anyone wants to ask questions, fire away. Anything that I consider to be taboo, I won't admit to, so you'll get an interesting answer instead. Anything normal, hopefully comes with an interesting answer anyway.

*party poppers for all!*

Just the typical Merry Christmas everyone. Stay awesome, keep kinky and all the fun stuff! :)

On Friday night, when closing Skype, I accidentally clicked on "sign out" instead of "close" so it logged me out of the Skype app on my laptop. No probs, this is the password I used to log in when I built the laptop about 3 months ago, I'll use that. Nope, Skype says that is not the right password.

This is where things started to get annoying.

So, ok, I'll just click on "Forgotten password" Oh look, it asks me for information, no probs, this was the email address I signed up with... and now it's sent me an email authorising me to change my password.

Ok, I'll follow that link. Yes, I'll click on forgotten password, yes, it's good you take your security seriously, ok, now I have to fill in a form. This is where it gets annoying. My skype account was old, it did not have a first name and last name, it was just a username. It also asks for passwords associated with the account, I don't know them because if I did, I wouldn't be at this page in the first place.

Anyway, I fill out the form as best I can, submit it, about five minutes later, get an automated email telling me they can not verify my details, but I was welcome to try again.

This time I go to my desktop. That still has the skype app logged in. I'll use the info from my profile. Username goes into first name, no last name, no birthday, no state, three users in my contact list. All the info is there. [submit] "You must provide the following" Me: "That information does not exist!"

Fill the fields with dummy/generic info. Email back from skype: "Too many password requests made for this account, ty in 24hrs"

Wait 24hrs. This time I go to my existing skype app that is logged in on my desktop. This is the one that can log me in automatically to my skype profile on the web page. It literally says "logging in" Click on "change password" Takes me to a change password page with the old password prefilled (According to the source page, with what I thought my password was suppose to be) Put in the new password. Old password does not match.

ARGH!

And the MS capture. Do not get me started on that.

After going around and around in circles, I get an email from MS - "There have been too many password reset requests made on this account. Just make a new one" Literally, that was what it said, make a new account because there is no way we're going to give you a password. This incidentally is after I had got emails saying "Your password is reset, click here to set a new one" and you go to that page only to be told "no, sorry, we know we said you could reset your password, but actually since your information doesn't match, you actually can't."

So now I have a new Skype account and is sort of sucks. First I have to re-add everyone, which isn't too bad because I did export my old contact list, but they still have to authorise me at their end. More annoying, it appears I can not have a single display name any more. You're going to be "firstname lastname" and you're going to like it.

You're also going to be either male or female. I don't care if you chose "unspecified" when you create the account. You're male or you're female and we need to know because we'll tint male ads blue and female ads pink. It did not know which country I'm in, which I did specify, but it did know which state not to mention various other little nuances.

TL;DR - Big rant about Skype. I had to get a new account because I accidentally clicked on the wrong thing.

I seem to have gained a bundle of new watchers lately, so Hi all new Watchers!

Umm, yeah, that pretty much covers it, so we now return you to your scheduled programming.

I'm currently in a little down about 1000km from my house. For me to get home, I need to get two flights. Originally I had one flight from A to B at 1:45 arriving at the city at about 3pm, then a second flight from B to C at about 4:30.

About a month ago, I got a message from the airline. "In order to serve me better" they had moved my 4pm flight to midday. This was a slight problem because I was still to be down in town A, so after some phone calls to various airlines, I just gave up and booked myself on the 4pm Tuesday flight.

Today I am in town A, all set for my flight. I get a message at about 12, telling me the flight has been delayed until 3pm. I get here a bit after 2 only to be told that the plane is still up in the city and hasn't even left yet. It's now 3:30, the plane hasn't left, so the earliest it can get here is 4:30, so the earliest I'll get to the city will be 5:30pm, probably closer to 6 or more realistically 7pm.

Bugger.

After six days in hospital, I've been allowed home (yay!)

Will take 4-6 weeks before completely healed apparently and I'm on some kick-ass antibiotics for the next week. (I suspect quite whimpy compared to the ones I was getting via IV). And it still hurts when I cough or breathe too deeply and I'm back to the standing orders of if it gets worse go back to Emergency.

I don't want to go back to Emergency. Last night was a big night - first time I have laid down to sleep in over a week. You have no idea how nice that was, even if I had gained a room mate who was as old as my dad, deaf and swore all the time. Not a little bit of swearing, lots and lots of really unpleasant swearing, then when the nurses appeared he's be all meek, except they must have heard him because he swore VERY LOUDLY.

Health workers have gained a new level of respect from me after spending a week in their world.

Is this where I post highly personal information about myself? I hope so.

Some people might know that I work in a remote location. We're about 300km from the nearest town and about 450km from the nearest hospital. Last week I was working a horror double weekend shift and on the second Saturday night I could feel this twinge below my right shoulder. I thought I had pulled a muscle, took the night easy and saw how I was on the Sunday morning.

Sunday it didn't seem too bad. Painful, but didn't stop me from doing anything. How I'd expect a muscle to behave. Monday it was worse. Because we're remote, we have RFDS (Royal Flying Doctor Service) medical chests. Amazing service. I call a number, two minutes later I'm talking to a doctor.

He suspect it's muscular or maybe viral pluracy. Told me to take ibprofen and see my normal GP if it wasn't better by Friday.

Tuesday I was set to leave and the opportunity to fly out came up. I know pluracy affects the lungs, lungs don't like altitude, so I called them up again and asked if it was safe to fly. This time I got a different doc whose conclusion was I'd be about 99.9% fine to fly, but he wouldn't risk the 0.1% (Possible air anurism). He did ask if I wanted to be picked up.

A pick up means they literally fly their medical plane out there with doctors and nurses and evac me. I said no, I'd be fine. About halfway home all the muscles started to spasm, my pain went through the roof and I really, really regretted turning down the evac. I did raid some panadine forte and that calmed things down.

By the time I got home it was about 8pm. I basically walked into the house, dumped my stuff and headed down to the ER room. I got out of ER just before 6am on Wednesday.

Conclusion - I have pneumonia, so the ER gave me some serious IV antibiotics as well as oral ones and scripts for painkillers. Friday I saw my normal doc who was not happy with my progress - on the amounts of antibiotics I'm on it should have been making a huge difference. Her advice, get an x-ray on Monday if it's the same, if it gets worse, get to the ER.

Saturday morning, I was doing something and it got worse. The pain which had been an ache shifted into like multiple knife wounds. So back down to the ER. Saturday afternoon, they too conclude I'm not reacting how they'd hoped and admitted me as a general patient.

The sign behind me on the bed says estimated release date of tomorrow, but they can't find anything specifically wrong. I am on some very hard core IV antibiotics, but don't show the expected coughing, spluttering and fever they'd expect with a bacterial infection. They did give me a CT scan to try and rule out a bloodclot, but there is so much fluid on my lungs it was inconclusive. They did have to give me morphine though so I was able to lay on my back.

That is one side effect. It hurts like hell if I lie down or on my side, so I haven't slept laying down for over a week now. I have a cocoon of pillows, blankets and other things to wedge me into an upright position, which is really not comfortable.

Apparently tomorrow they want to do another CT scan. I thought today they were going to drain fluid off my lungs which was going to be memorable, but the ultrasound just marked them off and not much more.

So yeah, that's me at the moment. I have certainly felt better. Also I have discovered just how pathetic daytime tv is.

Anyone else notice how hard it is to find an artist to commission when you have an urge for a commission? But how many are open when you don't have anything to draw?

Just poking around FA at the moment and following the banner ads. Reach the artist's web page - no commission information or broken commission link or its buried in a journal they wrote six months ago. Stop making it hard for me to give you money!

Ok, very much a first world problem, but I needed to vent.

You may not want to come too close. I've had one of those weeks where things I touch tend to stop working.

Power supply of a core switch at work died.
Power rail on one of my racks lost a phase
Charger for my laptop died and then the replacement one I pulled out a drawer didn't work either.
Stereo at home is now only producing static.

If anyone wants something broken, let me near it.

Next week at work I'm having an electrical safety test. Coincidence? Well, probably. I'm sort of dreading it. Apparently the central IT folks have been told that they're not to replace things like hot swappable power supplies because the device is energised while they are working on it. Which is kind of one of the key things of a hot swappable power supply.

As I pointed out, if I had to ask the site electrician to replace a slide-in/slide-out power supply, I'm sure he would provide me with very detailed instructions of the correct insertion technique and position. Apparently the sparkies don't like the test because it is meaningless. It's just an internal checkbox that says we've done a test. They're worried that after doing it, we'll feel we're qualified to work on more serious equipment, which we're not.

Oh well, I'm sure it will keep someone happy.