Embarassing our subcontractor

So a few weeks ago, one of my coworkers discovered something interesting — on the console of a Windows machine in a client’s rack at a hosting company, we found he was doing google searches on how to eject a cdrom. Pretty embarassing, really!

So we put together a webpage explaining how to get a CD ejected. Turn on Quicktime for the best effect.

The “Even Tanaka-san can understand” series
HOW TO EJECT A CDROM

{quicktime movie of a Sun Netra ejecting a CDROM}

We saw in the IE cache that you were having some trouble, so we thought we might help.

{photo of Solaris 8 Documentation CD}
This is a documentation CD. It has all of the information that you need on it.

{photo of me putting the CD in the Netra}
Here’s how you insert the CD — you understood at least this much, right? Because it’s just common sense.

{closed Netra CD drive}
This is where you started running into problems, right?

{some fake commands he probably typed in to eject the CD, including “toridashite” — open please!}
I’ll bet you started to panic, right?

{fake console, looking for the cdrom manual page}
Sadly, there is no man page for cdrom, right? So…how do you eject the CD?

{console showing the “eject” command}
Just like this. 5 letters. 6 if you cound the carriage return. Simple is best.

{photo of an open Netra CDROM drive}
Easy, right?

Because this is embarassing, you probably want to clear your browser’s cache in the future. When I discovered this, and the client saw you carrying the “How to build a Linux server” manual into the cage, we were more than a little worried…

Right?? Tanaka-san???

(In a comment inside the HTML itself, we left this little surprise: “Tanaka-san, the software engineer who has to use Google to eject a CD…we told all of the engineers in our company about this and had a very pleasant hour laughing. (I laughed so much I nearly had to be sent to the hospital!) Although it’s not the main reason, the fact that you can’t eject a CD is definitely a factor for us dropping you as our subcontractor. Please go away.”)

Abstract question:

Say you’re in a long-term, committed relationship with someone. Your partner decides to flirt with someone else. At what point does that flirting go over the line?

(And before you ask, no, I’m not asking because of something that happened. Just curious where you are on the issue!)

Weeeeeeeeeeee!

I am back thinking about weeee again:

The Lord of La Mancha
I am I, Don Quixote,
THe Lord of La Mancha,
My destiny calls and I go weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!
And the wild winds of fortune
Will carry me onward,
Oh withersoever they blow weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!
Whithersoever they blow,
Onward to glory I go weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

Modern-day Anthropology

This is perhaps one of the best social anthropological studies I’ve seen in a while. Thanks, Scott, for letting me see it. AN example:

The most disturbing customer of the day called right at nine to ask when we opened. I told him we were, and he asked if the DVD of “L.A. Sex Party” was in. (A lot of our movies have “sex party” in the title. It was only a few months ago that I realized that this is because a lot of porn renters don’t know what “orgy” means.)

Yay.

“Rave” act?

I am not one to promote the taking of illegal drugs. But I am against laws which put the wrong people in jail.

About 10-15 years ago, law enforcement officials and lawmakers tried to make computer operators liable for every message that passed through their systems. This meant that if you ran a mailing list, and someone on the mailing list posted an anti-government message, both that person and you were liable for its content. Kinda screwy, huh? These laws have been mostly struck down, though there are still some battles being fought. (Sorry, no links right now.)

Looks like the U.S. Senate is at it again. They’re saying that concert promoters should be held liable for up to 20 years in prison if people at their events take Ecstacy and other illegal drugs.

I know the lawmakers are trying to do “the right thing” here, based on the current problems. But the concert promoters can’t stop people from smuggling in a few tabs in their pockets. They can’t prevent a person’s drink being laced with Rohypnol and being date raped. They certainly should provide adequate security in the dance hall in case a problem breaks out, but how is it their responsibility that someone went down to Alphabet City and picked up a few tabs?

I agree with George Carlin. Once the governments of the world start putting a few of the bankers who launder the drug money and the lawyers who defend these drug pushers’ asses in jail, the drug trade would dry up immediately. “Hell, you wouldn’t be able to get drugs at high schools and prisons anymore!” :)

fun with grommit

OK, this was just entirely too much fun, and because my friends poked me to post this, here it is.

Read The Adventures Of Grommit over at atypical.net. Grommit is a perl script masquerading as an AI on a little IRC server network I help maintain.

Oh, and in other news, we can actually get married once we get to Canada! Yay!