We attempted to go hiking over the weekend at Harper's Ferry, WV. The National Weather Service told us on Sunday (we were to go hiking Monday) that the weather would be clear all day. This turned out to not be the case. Disappointingly, the places to park next to the bridge over the Potomac (Harper's Ferry is at the confluence of the Shenandoah and Potomac Rivers) had been razed in favor of a new layout from the National Park Service. This is kind of a bummer. We couldn't find out how we were supposed to get to the other side of the river for our hike. As we were realizing this, it started to rain. Not enough rain to get us seriously wet, but enough rain to make us concerned for the cameras, and for the hike back up a hill (I've never actually hiked up a hill that's slick with rain, but it's 1100' of elevation change, so I imagine it's not terribly fun). We thus turned around, and headed back to the car. We didn't even really get pictures worth keeping.
And speaking of which, I figured out what was plaguing the poor D200. Apparently, D200 owners have had problems (at least with the early batch of them, which I have) with them totally forgetting their custom settings, and instead using some wacky -- and wrong -- setting. The solution is to hold down "QUAL" and "+/-" for two seconds. It zaps most of the custom settings, and the wackiness. A few minutes of reconfiguration should get you back to where you were. At least for me. I didn't realize this was happening when I was using the camera out at Shenandoah attempting to take pictures of the nighttime sky (we went to Mathew's Arm campground to look at the sky on a new moon), and most of them were wrecked. Additionally, the pictures I took at the capitol when our cousins (on Sandy's side this time) were out from Oklahoma (yeah, there are chinese people in OK, can you believe it??). Apparently there's a firmware update that fixes this.
Work has been proceeding incredibly slowly. I find myself stuck with almost nothing to do much of the time. This fed/civ stuff is breaking my heart. We're implementing the work defined in Executive Order 13228, so it's not like we don't have a framework to go from. However, the NOAA staff have outlined some plans for the implementation which don't address many important questions. Things like "which multifactor auth to use." So we have TACACS, WiKID, and RADIUS swimming around in the requirements. Only it hasn't been pushed back into the requirements document (revision control? what's that?). We have a loose conflation of emails mentioning this or that, but no hard requirements. So I wind up interpreting EO13228 and marrying that with what I know to be best practices, and things that sucked or didn't suck in the past. That interpretation gets pushed into a "requirements" or OPLAN doc, and broadcast to people who won't read it. But in the end, it means when somebody says "well, why did we go with radius?", I can say "Because POTUS told us to. Didn't you get the policy doc I [wrote and] sent to you?"
So in a way it's kind of cool that I can write policy as long as it fits into the EO13228 framework, and then build my product to suit the policy I wrote. Of course it means I have to get the "doesn't suck" part right from the getgo, which doesn't always happen. I am hopeful that after all this time I should be able to get pretty close to asuckfulness. And I get to say things like "this document is based on the premise that the simplest solution is generally the correct solution." In other words, three different authentication schemes (in addition to PAM and LDAP) is probably not the right way to go. RADIUS it is.
In other news, it turns out I work with a guy who does "sailing lessons" on the Chesapeake. We had a lively discussion this morning about the differences between the harbor in San Diego and the Potomac river here. Basically, the Potomac is not suited for sailing because it's so damn narrow that you're tacking all the time. Said instructor said that he didn't think a Hobie 17 was suitable for sailing fast anyhow, because it "didn't have a jib." Well, the Getaway does have a jib. You can even get a spinnaker for it. Anyway, the point is it got me thinking about boats again. Sandy and I are convinced we need approximately three cars. A daily driver, a bruiser, and a truck to tow said bruiser or use offroad, etc. Well, the same is true of boats. I'd love to have a nice monohull for cruising, a wicked cat for high performance sailing, and then your average superfast powerboat for beating the hell out of the water, when necessary. We've talked often about retiring to Hawaii, possibly to Hilo or Ko'Olina (Big Island, O'ahu respectively). The problem is, we'd need a boat. Hell, it seems like we'd need three. And three cars. Not to mention the house. This sucks. I can't buy all the toys I need.
05 September, 2006
25 August, 2006
Two: the other OTHER magic number
People have claimed that three is, in fact, the magic number. Some people favor 42, some people e, engineers often 8, maths people e or 3.14 (really just a corruption of 3, right?), 14.7 has some significance in combustion, and so on. Today, two is important.
So way back in 2001, there were two cities on the east coast that learned a lesson about computers. Sometimes, you could have a cluster, an UPS, a big diesel, nice HVAC, and everything. Massive mainframes, and so on. Normally, only one computer actually goes away, or one part of it, or one generator, or one PDU, or one battery, and so on.
Then, unexpectedly, two buildings vanished, and a third was damaged (well, okay, sometimes 3 is important). It turned out your batteries and diesels and HVAC and all that shiny stuff was Just Not Enough.
The Bush administration, in their typical lock-step with Foreign Policy, Public Opinion, and Reality, noticed this. And thus Critical Infrastructure Protection became more than just talk. Some agencies were told that their assets were "national critical infrastructure". The NIAC was born in the same festering pool that DHS was born out of, and absorbed Bush's original council into its own. The original, 75-page CIP document published by the Bush administration became hundreds of pages of guidance at DHS. Actually, that's not quite right. The original document was twelve pages, followed by a 75-page document, followed by the deluge that became the NIAC guidance.
Okay, Okay. Why do I mention this?
Well, all us sysadmins know about disaster recovery ("DR"). I mean, before, we called it "failover." But now you can't just fail over, you need to fail over to a remote site. I recently interviewed with the Census, as I mentioned. Well, the Census has a huge datacenter in Bowie, MD. Well, not AOL huge, but still Pretty Big. They told me this was their only datacenter, and they were quite proud of this. I used the AOL (who is next to IAD, Dulles Airport) lingo and asked, "what happens if a plane falls on the building?" So, just for example (don't you go pointing any planes at the census, people), the Census fails over to a datacenter in Indiana. That's geographically removed. Dig? At ACS, they had a failover site in Columbus, OH (so DC to OH is also good). Some people go as far as to put them in other countries, on the other side of the planet, and so on.
But I've been working with NOAA. You know, the weather people! NOAA recently got told that the GOES and POES satellite services they were providing were national critical infrastructure (I'd use "NCIS", but that's already been taken by something completely unrelated), and that they had better harden them against failure. Well, the ground stuff is largely mainframe-based, and so redundant. But, of course, the question is not now asked, "what happens if we lose a proc or HVAC?" but rather "what happens if the Suitland facility is a smoking hole in the ground?"
That question has been answered. Sort of. Some of you read about Chincoteague Island when you were kids, and may know where Asateague is. Some of you have camped there, despite the grit and mosquitoes. Near that place, the tiny little toehold on Maryland that Virginia has, is Wallops Island. The whole island (a thin, barrier island) and the surrounding peninsula are referred to collectively as "Wallops, VA" although no such area is incorporated.
Anyways, so when they wanted to fail stuff over from the federal center at Suitland, the choice was made to fail over to Wallops. This makes sense, as Wallops has some Big Dishes (including one called "Satan"), as well as very high speed connectivity over land. Now, that is NASA's gear, but I am sure if there's a smoking hole in Suitland, MD, NASA won't mind sharing bandwidth with NOAA. At least we know there's fibre in the ground. Most of what we do with the GOES birds however, is bounced off of, well, other birds.
That's the project I'm working on now. I am building out the stuff that goes to Wallops, and in the process, figuring out the tangled mess of stuff that connects GOES, POES, our consumers, and even (you had to ask) DISA. Priceless moment: on my first or second day, I am asking what our requirements and tolerances are. I am trying to articulate what I mean and I just say "well, let me fall back on military stuff. basically if I want to plug this cable into that wall, I have to ask DISA if it's okay. and they'll hand me a 400 page book that says what I need to do to make sure it is okay, and then they will audit me and make sure. I then plug it in." I am however, working for a civilian organization, and there's no DISA. "So who's DISA?"
There is no DISA. While nobody has much love for DISA (except, well, DISA), I have never missed it more. There is so much griping and buck-passing that I never know where my responsibilities end or what I've really been asked to do. Because what I've been asked to do makes no sense, and if I say what I think I should do, they say, no, do what we asked you to do. So I have to come up with some compromise in the middle and do that. As a consultant, this troubles me, because I'm usually asked to fix problems with specific bounds. Fuzzy logic works for rice cookers, but it's not so great for contracts.
Today I learned (it's been a week) that we have an AIX guy, an HPUX guy, a Network guy, and a Linux guy (me). We all report to the same person, and we don't hate eachother. So when things go tits up with the installation, we should be able to sit down and figure out where the problem is. This pleases me. So things are going a little more smoothly.
That's it. I had expected to update people sooner, but I've had pneumonia, and I'm getting over it. Or rather, am mostly over it. The original culprit, supposedly a 5mm nodule in my right lung, is "suspicious", but we're going to have a look again in 6-12 months to make sure it's either not there, less suspicious, or static. Or something. Less spooky. That second look will be another CT. Also at Virginia Hospital Center, which is fabulous (now; it used to suck and smell like old socks).
So way back in 2001, there were two cities on the east coast that learned a lesson about computers. Sometimes, you could have a cluster, an UPS, a big diesel, nice HVAC, and everything. Massive mainframes, and so on. Normally, only one computer actually goes away, or one part of it, or one generator, or one PDU, or one battery, and so on.
Then, unexpectedly, two buildings vanished, and a third was damaged (well, okay, sometimes 3 is important). It turned out your batteries and diesels and HVAC and all that shiny stuff was Just Not Enough.
The Bush administration, in their typical lock-step with Foreign Policy, Public Opinion, and Reality, noticed this. And thus Critical Infrastructure Protection became more than just talk. Some agencies were told that their assets were "national critical infrastructure". The NIAC was born in the same festering pool that DHS was born out of, and absorbed Bush's original council into its own. The original, 75-page CIP document published by the Bush administration became hundreds of pages of guidance at DHS. Actually, that's not quite right. The original document was twelve pages, followed by a 75-page document, followed by the deluge that became the NIAC guidance.
Okay, Okay. Why do I mention this?
Well, all us sysadmins know about disaster recovery ("DR"). I mean, before, we called it "failover." But now you can't just fail over, you need to fail over to a remote site. I recently interviewed with the Census, as I mentioned. Well, the Census has a huge datacenter in Bowie, MD. Well, not AOL huge, but still Pretty Big. They told me this was their only datacenter, and they were quite proud of this. I used the AOL (who is next to IAD, Dulles Airport) lingo and asked, "what happens if a plane falls on the building?" So, just for example (don't you go pointing any planes at the census, people), the Census fails over to a datacenter in Indiana. That's geographically removed. Dig? At ACS, they had a failover site in Columbus, OH (so DC to OH is also good). Some people go as far as to put them in other countries, on the other side of the planet, and so on.
But I've been working with NOAA. You know, the weather people! NOAA recently got told that the GOES and POES satellite services they were providing were national critical infrastructure (I'd use "NCIS", but that's already been taken by something completely unrelated), and that they had better harden them against failure. Well, the ground stuff is largely mainframe-based, and so redundant. But, of course, the question is not now asked, "what happens if we lose a proc or HVAC?" but rather "what happens if the Suitland facility is a smoking hole in the ground?"
That question has been answered. Sort of. Some of you read about Chincoteague Island when you were kids, and may know where Asateague is. Some of you have camped there, despite the grit and mosquitoes. Near that place, the tiny little toehold on Maryland that Virginia has, is Wallops Island. The whole island (a thin, barrier island) and the surrounding peninsula are referred to collectively as "Wallops, VA" although no such area is incorporated.
Anyways, so when they wanted to fail stuff over from the federal center at Suitland, the choice was made to fail over to Wallops. This makes sense, as Wallops has some Big Dishes (including one called "Satan"), as well as very high speed connectivity over land. Now, that is NASA's gear, but I am sure if there's a smoking hole in Suitland, MD, NASA won't mind sharing bandwidth with NOAA. At least we know there's fibre in the ground. Most of what we do with the GOES birds however, is bounced off of, well, other birds.
That's the project I'm working on now. I am building out the stuff that goes to Wallops, and in the process, figuring out the tangled mess of stuff that connects GOES, POES, our consumers, and even (you had to ask) DISA. Priceless moment: on my first or second day, I am asking what our requirements and tolerances are. I am trying to articulate what I mean and I just say "well, let me fall back on military stuff. basically if I want to plug this cable into that wall, I have to ask DISA if it's okay. and they'll hand me a 400 page book that says what I need to do to make sure it is okay, and then they will audit me and make sure. I then plug it in." I am however, working for a civilian organization, and there's no DISA. "So who's DISA?"
There is no DISA. While nobody has much love for DISA (except, well, DISA), I have never missed it more. There is so much griping and buck-passing that I never know where my responsibilities end or what I've really been asked to do. Because what I've been asked to do makes no sense, and if I say what I think I should do, they say, no, do what we asked you to do. So I have to come up with some compromise in the middle and do that. As a consultant, this troubles me, because I'm usually asked to fix problems with specific bounds. Fuzzy logic works for rice cookers, but it's not so great for contracts.
Today I learned (it's been a week) that we have an AIX guy, an HPUX guy, a Network guy, and a Linux guy (me). We all report to the same person, and we don't hate eachother. So when things go tits up with the installation, we should be able to sit down and figure out where the problem is. This pleases me. So things are going a little more smoothly.
That's it. I had expected to update people sooner, but I've had pneumonia, and I'm getting over it. Or rather, am mostly over it. The original culprit, supposedly a 5mm nodule in my right lung, is "suspicious", but we're going to have a look again in 6-12 months to make sure it's either not there, less suspicious, or static. Or something. Less spooky. That second look will be another CT. Also at Virginia Hospital Center, which is fabulous (now; it used to suck and smell like old socks).
22 August, 2006
First day of work tomorrow
Wish me luck, I suppose. Not really necessary. Getting up at 0640 to be there at 0800. Not sure how the setup will work. Bringing iBook in case I need a computer, but I suppose they will be giving me something. Probably a PC, maybe a sunblade or similar. I love metro commuting.
Had lung CT today, will get results on friday regarding the fluid in my lungs. As of present, I still have pneumonia and I am alternating fever and chills. And, yes, probably contagious. But I need the dough.
Saw a brochure about the Subaru Legacy 2.5 GT "Spec. B". Hadn't heard there was a "spec b" Legacy. Maybe I should look into a black wagon legacy with an EJ25 and STIize it. I wonder if the STI inverted coilovers bolt in to the wagon. It'd be fun as hell to do the things to that car that I want to do to Sandy's car (make it an oversteering, drifting beast). But it seems silly to have a second car note. And if I lease a car, I can't really make it into any kind of beast, let alone the kind that eats copious amounts of rubber.
Had lung CT today, will get results on friday regarding the fluid in my lungs. As of present, I still have pneumonia and I am alternating fever and chills. And, yes, probably contagious. But I need the dough.
Saw a brochure about the Subaru Legacy 2.5 GT "Spec. B". Hadn't heard there was a "spec b" Legacy. Maybe I should look into a black wagon legacy with an EJ25 and STIize it. I wonder if the STI inverted coilovers bolt in to the wagon. It'd be fun as hell to do the things to that car that I want to do to Sandy's car (make it an oversteering, drifting beast). But it seems silly to have a second car note. And if I lease a car, I can't really make it into any kind of beast, let alone the kind that eats copious amounts of rubber.
19 August, 2006
sicker, but in a good way
I am definitely feeling sicker than I did yesterday. Dizzy, tired. Not coughing (thank the jebus for tussionex), but generally feeling like shit. I think it's the antibiotics. Hope that means that I will be feeling better soon.
18 August, 2006
Walking what?
There is much to cover today, so we will go in Reverse Neurotic Poltation. That's Ugly, followed by Bad, followed by Good. Didn't you learn this in school?
So. Ugly. I spent yesterday at GWU Hospital's MFA ("medical faculty associates"), where I met with a doctor who was well intentioned, but without much in the way of clue. And he was a nice guy. Even cute. Sigh. So Dr. Good Intentions meets me and asks me what the problem is. Well, naturally, I am coughing up blood, coughing in general, congested, and feel like shit. The usual, right? Sorry everyone, no gory tongue photo of this one. I tell Dr. GI about the "mass in my lung" and he looks at me and nods like, "okay, tell me something interesting." I explain that I am tweaked between the lung thing and the blood thing. He looks concerned. Well, it was more of a "feigned concern", but who's counting? So he listens to my chest, looks at my tonsils ("Whoa, those look irritated"), and asks me to say "e" a bunch of times while he watches my tonsils. Okay, whatever. He comes back with another doctor who says "well, we've re-reviewed your x-rays, and you have what's called an incursion into your lung. But it's not tuberculosis." I make the "duh" face. He says "so, you got pneumonia. we're gonna give you something called [spell it out with me kids] aye-zith-ro-max." To which I naturally respond "uh, a z-pack. okay." He looks at me, thunder stolen. I coulda told them I had pneumonia. There's fluid in my lungs. It's yellow. I cough it up. I cough it up so much I've ruptured something, and so I get blood. THAT IS WHAT PNEUMONIA IS. Why did I need to go to the damn hospital for this? I even have an extra "azithromax" in my closet from the last tool who prescribed it to me.
Sandy and I both agree this is inadequate health care (Sandy has more experience with coughing up foul shit than anyone else on the planet, trust me on this, I saw it all come up, and I even got to see the inside of her lungs!), and she says she'll try to get me an appointment with a doctor we affectionately call "Dr. Spanky" (he's like 12) at Arlington Pulmonary Associates. I am doubtful that she can get me an appointment for that day, but she calls them, explains the blood, and they suggest the ER. Sandy says "we've been to the ER, and they suck." So they give us an appointment. I go in for my appointment. I didn't get to see Spanky. He's a nice guy. I got a nice Indian guy instead. I explain the whole thing and he does basically the same things that Dr. GI did the day before, only Dr. Indian pays attention instead of fucking with the computer (there was no computer at Dr. Indian's exam room). He asks me good questions like, do you cough more at night? When you lean back? Forward? Etc. He's trying to figure out where the fluid is. He says my tonsils are fucked up (yeah, "duh" face again). He says that since he can't get the x-rays from GWU, he's gonna order some more. He orders them, and the news, dear reader, is not terrific. He says I have a lot of shit in my lungs. Like lots of shit. The good news is it looks like lots of fluid and grossness, not TB, not lung cancer (!), and so on. He explains that there has been a lot of "pertussis" coming back for some reason. This is one of the things you're vaccinated for as a child, but apparently it wears off. They said I could also have what's called "walking pneumonia" which is a particular kind of bug, which they also tested for (yes, more needles, more blood drawn, but at least no arterial gas test, ugh). He said they also did some "blunt tests" to make sure that I wasn't, you know, dying. They suggested an HIV test, since it sounds like I had a depressed immune system, but yay, I already got an HIV test at GW. I'm clean, ladies. So since there's so much foulness and grossness in my lungs, I get a lung CT on monday, and see Dr. Indian again on Friday. However, I start a new job next week, so that's going to be interesting to explain. We'll see what the CT says. So the ugly is, pneumonia. Probably contagious, and not quite sick enough to be in bed. Just sick enough to be walking around coughing it up. Everything ebola's not. Such a stupid bug. Anyways. Let's get on to the bad.
The bad. So the bad is the fact that I had to go get drug tested today. In fact, I got to sit in a room full of people on parole, people who were unquestionably jonesing from drug withdrawal, and other miscreants. And the room stank of them. [interlude: 45 minutes] After this, I got to walk into another room where a woman, where a woman, as nice as she can under the circumstances, instructs me I have to wash my hands. Sink over there. Don't use soap (I guess this is a contaminant). Hands me a cup. Pee above this line. Don't flush. I'm like, uh?? She says just pee above the line, the rest goes in the bowl, you don't flush, you come back out. I've peed in cups before, but I guess I had to pee a little more than normal, and I manage to, you betcha, get pee all over my cleansed -- but not soaped -- hands. I try my best to locate something to wash my hands with, to clean the cup with, but no dice. Because, remember, all the people in the waiting room are criminals who are trying to fuck up the test. I sheepishly emerge from the bathroom saying, uh, I hope you have gloves on. She smiles, as she does have gloves on, wipes the cup for me, and says I can flush. I desperately ask her "may I wash my hands now? with soap?" Yes. Sign, date, observe that she seals it, add social and other data, and she says it will be up in boston or wherever whenever they're done inspecting it.
You know I was going to say it, so here goes. This really pisses me the fuck off. You know, I came in and I intereviewed not once, but two times. I've exchanged over fifty emails with these people. My CV is as long as my arm (my arms are long). And you know what, I can talk more solaris than most people can actually fucking do. I've used solaris that wasn't even fucking called solaris. And I've done it on drugs, off drugs, near drugs, while coworkers were selling drugs, and more different drug associations than I care to fucking count. Yet these bedwetting fucknuggets who are afraid of somebody in their midst being on drugs are requiring me to get tested. Well, guess what, people? One of the cures for pertussis and walking motherfucking pneumonia is a cough SUPPRESSANT. And you know what? We apes haven't got many besides the opiates.
So you can bet your ass I passed that piss test. But I am going to the fucking pharmacy, and I am going to go pick up some fucking opiates, and they are going to be coursing through my motherfucking veins as I am relocating some national critical infrastructure for one of the nations foremost defense contractors. As I sat in that room, I remembered the days of my youth, when I had a much more relaxed approach to drugs than I do today, when I said "I'd never take a job I got tested for. Just on principle." Well, today, I got fucked by the system, took it like a three year old who ask to was their hands, and I accepted it. And all I can do is sit here like an impotent fuck and whine.
Maybe one day the world will realize that I could handle running an E25k ad infinitum on 15mg of morphine prn, but if you were to give me four hundred miligrams of quetiapine, I'd fall asleep drooling in your lap and would BREEZE THE FUCK THROUGH any whiz quiz you got.
Fuck. And Tommy Chong was on NPR today. I hate this planet sometimes.
And now, ladies and gentlemen, the good. The BMW 550i. It comes with a 360hp 4.6L V8, it starts right around $50k, and is available with a six speed. Now, by the time I get all the goodies on it, the price hits around $63k, but the lease is still pretty okay (36 mos). Faster than the STI? No. Fast? Yeah. 5.3 seconds to 60 or so. That's pretty good for a bloated pig of a car. But it is also tres comfy. Way more tres comfy than the CTS-V (which would eat the 550 for lunch, by the by). So I feel inclined to add it to yesterday's list. But I don't feel comfortable getting into anything like this kind of relationship without saving up six months of car payment (in case I wind up unemployed for six months again), as well as the down payment. And for that kind of money, I can do what I want with the Z. Choices. Man, I hate this planet sometimes.
So. Ugly. I spent yesterday at GWU Hospital's MFA ("medical faculty associates"), where I met with a doctor who was well intentioned, but without much in the way of clue. And he was a nice guy. Even cute. Sigh. So Dr. Good Intentions meets me and asks me what the problem is. Well, naturally, I am coughing up blood, coughing in general, congested, and feel like shit. The usual, right? Sorry everyone, no gory tongue photo of this one. I tell Dr. GI about the "mass in my lung" and he looks at me and nods like, "okay, tell me something interesting." I explain that I am tweaked between the lung thing and the blood thing. He looks concerned. Well, it was more of a "feigned concern", but who's counting? So he listens to my chest, looks at my tonsils ("Whoa, those look irritated"), and asks me to say "e" a bunch of times while he watches my tonsils. Okay, whatever. He comes back with another doctor who says "well, we've re-reviewed your x-rays, and you have what's called an incursion into your lung. But it's not tuberculosis." I make the "duh" face. He says "so, you got pneumonia. we're gonna give you something called [spell it out with me kids] aye-zith-ro-max." To which I naturally respond "uh, a z-pack. okay." He looks at me, thunder stolen. I coulda told them I had pneumonia. There's fluid in my lungs. It's yellow. I cough it up. I cough it up so much I've ruptured something, and so I get blood. THAT IS WHAT PNEUMONIA IS. Why did I need to go to the damn hospital for this? I even have an extra "azithromax" in my closet from the last tool who prescribed it to me.
Sandy and I both agree this is inadequate health care (Sandy has more experience with coughing up foul shit than anyone else on the planet, trust me on this, I saw it all come up, and I even got to see the inside of her lungs!), and she says she'll try to get me an appointment with a doctor we affectionately call "Dr. Spanky" (he's like 12) at Arlington Pulmonary Associates. I am doubtful that she can get me an appointment for that day, but she calls them, explains the blood, and they suggest the ER. Sandy says "we've been to the ER, and they suck." So they give us an appointment. I go in for my appointment. I didn't get to see Spanky. He's a nice guy. I got a nice Indian guy instead. I explain the whole thing and he does basically the same things that Dr. GI did the day before, only Dr. Indian pays attention instead of fucking with the computer (there was no computer at Dr. Indian's exam room). He asks me good questions like, do you cough more at night? When you lean back? Forward? Etc. He's trying to figure out where the fluid is. He says my tonsils are fucked up (yeah, "duh" face again). He says that since he can't get the x-rays from GWU, he's gonna order some more. He orders them, and the news, dear reader, is not terrific. He says I have a lot of shit in my lungs. Like lots of shit. The good news is it looks like lots of fluid and grossness, not TB, not lung cancer (!), and so on. He explains that there has been a lot of "pertussis" coming back for some reason. This is one of the things you're vaccinated for as a child, but apparently it wears off. They said I could also have what's called "walking pneumonia" which is a particular kind of bug, which they also tested for (yes, more needles, more blood drawn, but at least no arterial gas test, ugh). He said they also did some "blunt tests" to make sure that I wasn't, you know, dying. They suggested an HIV test, since it sounds like I had a depressed immune system, but yay, I already got an HIV test at GW. I'm clean, ladies. So since there's so much foulness and grossness in my lungs, I get a lung CT on monday, and see Dr. Indian again on Friday. However, I start a new job next week, so that's going to be interesting to explain. We'll see what the CT says. So the ugly is, pneumonia. Probably contagious, and not quite sick enough to be in bed. Just sick enough to be walking around coughing it up. Everything ebola's not. Such a stupid bug. Anyways. Let's get on to the bad.
The bad. So the bad is the fact that I had to go get drug tested today. In fact, I got to sit in a room full of people on parole, people who were unquestionably jonesing from drug withdrawal, and other miscreants. And the room stank of them. [interlude: 45 minutes] After this, I got to walk into another room where a woman, where a woman, as nice as she can under the circumstances, instructs me I have to wash my hands. Sink over there. Don't use soap (I guess this is a contaminant). Hands me a cup. Pee above this line. Don't flush. I'm like, uh?? She says just pee above the line, the rest goes in the bowl, you don't flush, you come back out. I've peed in cups before, but I guess I had to pee a little more than normal, and I manage to, you betcha, get pee all over my cleansed -- but not soaped -- hands. I try my best to locate something to wash my hands with, to clean the cup with, but no dice. Because, remember, all the people in the waiting room are criminals who are trying to fuck up the test. I sheepishly emerge from the bathroom saying, uh, I hope you have gloves on. She smiles, as she does have gloves on, wipes the cup for me, and says I can flush. I desperately ask her "may I wash my hands now? with soap?" Yes. Sign, date, observe that she seals it, add social and other data, and she says it will be up in boston or wherever whenever they're done inspecting it.
You know I was going to say it, so here goes. This really pisses me the fuck off. You know, I came in and I intereviewed not once, but two times. I've exchanged over fifty emails with these people. My CV is as long as my arm (my arms are long). And you know what, I can talk more solaris than most people can actually fucking do. I've used solaris that wasn't even fucking called solaris. And I've done it on drugs, off drugs, near drugs, while coworkers were selling drugs, and more different drug associations than I care to fucking count. Yet these bedwetting fucknuggets who are afraid of somebody in their midst being on drugs are requiring me to get tested. Well, guess what, people? One of the cures for pertussis and walking motherfucking pneumonia is a cough SUPPRESSANT. And you know what? We apes haven't got many besides the opiates.
So you can bet your ass I passed that piss test. But I am going to the fucking pharmacy, and I am going to go pick up some fucking opiates, and they are going to be coursing through my motherfucking veins as I am relocating some national critical infrastructure for one of the nations foremost defense contractors. As I sat in that room, I remembered the days of my youth, when I had a much more relaxed approach to drugs than I do today, when I said "I'd never take a job I got tested for. Just on principle." Well, today, I got fucked by the system, took it like a three year old who ask to was their hands, and I accepted it. And all I can do is sit here like an impotent fuck and whine.
Maybe one day the world will realize that I could handle running an E25k ad infinitum on 15mg of morphine prn, but if you were to give me four hundred miligrams of quetiapine, I'd fall asleep drooling in your lap and would BREEZE THE FUCK THROUGH any whiz quiz you got.
Fuck. And Tommy Chong was on NPR today. I hate this planet sometimes.
And now, ladies and gentlemen, the good. The BMW 550i. It comes with a 360hp 4.6L V8, it starts right around $50k, and is available with a six speed. Now, by the time I get all the goodies on it, the price hits around $63k, but the lease is still pretty okay (36 mos). Faster than the STI? No. Fast? Yeah. 5.3 seconds to 60 or so. That's pretty good for a bloated pig of a car. But it is also tres comfy. Way more tres comfy than the CTS-V (which would eat the 550 for lunch, by the by). So I feel inclined to add it to yesterday's list. But I don't feel comfortable getting into anything like this kind of relationship without saving up six months of car payment (in case I wind up unemployed for six months again), as well as the down payment. And for that kind of money, I can do what I want with the Z. Choices. Man, I hate this planet sometimes.
15 August, 2006
Let's talk some about cars.
Carrera 4S: $93,000
Audi RS4: $75,000
Corvette C6 Z06: $75,000 (but you pay $2,000 - $15,000 in "fucking dealer" markup)
Audi S4: $55,000
Audi A3 3.2: $40,000
Subaru STI: $35,000
Mitsubishi Evo IX: $36,000
Let's start with the fact that the wife's car is a Subaru STI. And I won't let her beat me to the grocery store. There's a road I won't mention here because some asshat who lives in north arlington will mention it to the ever-vigilant APD, and they'll put a speed trap up there, and I'll go to jail. Let's just say there's a road or two where we reach triple digit speeds between home and Whole Foods. The STI of course can do this. Note that all the cars above (except the STI, Evo, and A3) are faster than the STI.
The A3 makes the list because it's a sports-hatch, which is cool. It's got a 3.2 and a tiptronic transmission (which means no 4-2 shifts, but I think I might be able to live with it) 255hp. It's anemic as hell. But maybe, just maybe, there's a supercharger kit for it. Because god knows plumbing a turbo onto a V6 is a pain in the goddamn ass.
The Corvette is a fun car. I might even be happy with a C6, or a Cadillac CTS-V. But both of these cars are V8's, and are JUST AS DAMN FAST as the STI (or the Evo, or ...). But it's also rear wheel drive, which means if it's going to do Arlington's Mt. Akina, it's going to be drifting around turns, not going straight down them like a throttle crazed baboon (think 28 days later: those monkeys, the violent, blood spewing monkeys, imagine them, with an STI, and hell bent on killing anything else on the road with sheer speed). Besides, the Takahashi brothers lost to Takumi's AE86 because they had TOO MUCH power going through those turns.
So let's turn to the C4S. Okay, so this is a car with 350 some horsepower and it weighs 3200lbs, give or take. Which means it's gonna put some whupass on the STI and it happens to be all wheel drive. Mt. Akina, watch out. The C4S has your number. But let's just spell this out so I can refresh my own memory ninety-three-motherfucking-thousand dollars. Oh, I had my game face on at the dealer, so he was totally happy to go through numbers with me. Let's assume I put $10,000 down on a 48-month lease. That would make a monthly payment of $1,325. Or, I could buy the car outright, give him the same $10,000, and I'd have a monthly payment of $1,500. Give or take a left nut. Who the fuck buys these cars? I mean, we're not quite at the RS4 yet, but let me give Porsche a little bit of a hint: 450hp, 4200lbs, all wheel drive, eight fucking pad calipers, and $75,000. I'm not going to do the math in my head because I'm thinking about porsche salesmen impaled on stakes instead of math. But $75,000 is a lot less than $93,000, and the RS4 would fucking OWN the C4S. So, me likey the C4S. But, it goes in that bin where I say "fuck that noise."
R4S. Nice car. Four doors. Has a button to open up the exhaust (or, alternatively, close it if your neighbors complain or you set off car alarms ... like our STI does). Makes 450 or whatever horsepower. It's a heavy car, but any car that does 100hp per litre, and manages to get better than a 10:1 lb:hp ratio is good in my book (the Viper was one of the first to do that, only it had so much goddamn torque nobody could drive the thing). So, cool, but still, $75,000. I could buy a 2006 STI, and spend $15,000 putting God's Own Turbo on the car, and have boost from 3500rpm all the way up to 5500rpm, and be doing four wheel donut burnouts in the Audi parking lot. I figure these payments would be on the order of $900, give or take (since I've estimated the Z06 payments).
And then there's the S4. So Audi has what we call an achilles heel. The quattro stuff is great. Dad had an Audi 90 that was anemic as a wet noodle (he'll probably take offense to that), but you could throw that fucker into a turn and stand on the gas and it would just grip, grip, grip. However, the quattro goodies added 800lbs to the already portly luxury car. So an S4 has 355 horsepower. Or so I am told. I have a hard time believing that the S4 would run down the STI on Mt. Akina's downhill.
Subaru STI. We could buy another STI, and I could do all the shit that I think about doing to Sandy's car to my own car. The problem is the STI is tuned to within an inch of its life. Here's the deal. Subaru folks will know this. The turbo, if you pump it up to 18lbs of boost, is way out of its efficiency range, and you won't be getting as much air as you think you are, and it will be hotter. Not so cool. Furthermore, your injectors will hit 100% duty cycle, which sucks. So you gotta upgrade your turbo, your fuel pump, your fuel injectors, your ECU, and possibly your intercooler, to get more than 17psi of boost. And let's not even talk about the suspension. There is a SPT suspension for the STI ("inverted struts") that is adjustable. There are also the "pinks" springs which are JDM and better damped for the USDM struts. Either way, the suspension on the STI needs a little help in a few places. And apparently there's no horsepower to be gained in the intake. Although Subaru has told me there is. So get this. You buy a new STI for $35,000, and the first think you do is you go to the dealer and say "please to take off the turbo, put this turbo on, get rid of that ECU, we want this other one, add the perrin top mount intercooler, the pink injectors, and this MSD fuel pump. Oh, and we'd like boost at 20psi." So that's gonna set you back something like 10 grand, and you're gonna be making 400hp. All those little honda fuckers do it on credit cards. I'm a cash kind of person. I don't think that's a road I want to go down. Because when I blow a tranny, it's MY dime, not Fuji Heavy Industries. So, fuck that.
What we need for Arlington's Mr. Akina is a panda Trueno. If only all of them hadn't been rodded to shit already. If I could find one that was a liftback, original paint, original motor, and "needed a little work," I'd be all over that fucker. With cash. But nooooooo. I must conquer Mt. Akina in something that's going to cost me anywhere from $35,000 to $95,000. And include a car note.
Notice I didn't mention the Evo? That's because I don't have a face full of pimples, and I'm not 17.
I've said it before, I'll say it again.
Fuck. You. World.
Audi RS4: $75,000
Corvette C6 Z06: $75,000 (but you pay $2,000 - $15,000 in "fucking dealer" markup)
Audi S4: $55,000
Audi A3 3.2: $40,000
Subaru STI: $35,000
Mitsubishi Evo IX: $36,000
Let's start with the fact that the wife's car is a Subaru STI. And I won't let her beat me to the grocery store. There's a road I won't mention here because some asshat who lives in north arlington will mention it to the ever-vigilant APD, and they'll put a speed trap up there, and I'll go to jail. Let's just say there's a road or two where we reach triple digit speeds between home and Whole Foods. The STI of course can do this. Note that all the cars above (except the STI, Evo, and A3) are faster than the STI.
The A3 makes the list because it's a sports-hatch, which is cool. It's got a 3.2 and a tiptronic transmission (which means no 4-2 shifts, but I think I might be able to live with it) 255hp. It's anemic as hell. But maybe, just maybe, there's a supercharger kit for it. Because god knows plumbing a turbo onto a V6 is a pain in the goddamn ass.
The Corvette is a fun car. I might even be happy with a C6, or a Cadillac CTS-V. But both of these cars are V8's, and are JUST AS DAMN FAST as the STI (or the Evo, or ...). But it's also rear wheel drive, which means if it's going to do Arlington's Mt. Akina, it's going to be drifting around turns, not going straight down them like a throttle crazed baboon (think 28 days later: those monkeys, the violent, blood spewing monkeys, imagine them, with an STI, and hell bent on killing anything else on the road with sheer speed). Besides, the Takahashi brothers lost to Takumi's AE86 because they had TOO MUCH power going through those turns.
So let's turn to the C4S. Okay, so this is a car with 350 some horsepower and it weighs 3200lbs, give or take. Which means it's gonna put some whupass on the STI and it happens to be all wheel drive. Mt. Akina, watch out. The C4S has your number. But let's just spell this out so I can refresh my own memory ninety-three-motherfucking-thousand dollars. Oh, I had my game face on at the dealer, so he was totally happy to go through numbers with me. Let's assume I put $10,000 down on a 48-month lease. That would make a monthly payment of $1,325. Or, I could buy the car outright, give him the same $10,000, and I'd have a monthly payment of $1,500. Give or take a left nut. Who the fuck buys these cars? I mean, we're not quite at the RS4 yet, but let me give Porsche a little bit of a hint: 450hp, 4200lbs, all wheel drive, eight fucking pad calipers, and $75,000. I'm not going to do the math in my head because I'm thinking about porsche salesmen impaled on stakes instead of math. But $75,000 is a lot less than $93,000, and the RS4 would fucking OWN the C4S. So, me likey the C4S. But, it goes in that bin where I say "fuck that noise."
R4S. Nice car. Four doors. Has a button to open up the exhaust (or, alternatively, close it if your neighbors complain or you set off car alarms ... like our STI does). Makes 450 or whatever horsepower. It's a heavy car, but any car that does 100hp per litre, and manages to get better than a 10:1 lb:hp ratio is good in my book (the Viper was one of the first to do that, only it had so much goddamn torque nobody could drive the thing). So, cool, but still, $75,000. I could buy a 2006 STI, and spend $15,000 putting God's Own Turbo on the car, and have boost from 3500rpm all the way up to 5500rpm, and be doing four wheel donut burnouts in the Audi parking lot. I figure these payments would be on the order of $900, give or take (since I've estimated the Z06 payments).
And then there's the S4. So Audi has what we call an achilles heel. The quattro stuff is great. Dad had an Audi 90 that was anemic as a wet noodle (he'll probably take offense to that), but you could throw that fucker into a turn and stand on the gas and it would just grip, grip, grip. However, the quattro goodies added 800lbs to the already portly luxury car. So an S4 has 355 horsepower. Or so I am told. I have a hard time believing that the S4 would run down the STI on Mt. Akina's downhill.
Subaru STI. We could buy another STI, and I could do all the shit that I think about doing to Sandy's car to my own car. The problem is the STI is tuned to within an inch of its life. Here's the deal. Subaru folks will know this. The turbo, if you pump it up to 18lbs of boost, is way out of its efficiency range, and you won't be getting as much air as you think you are, and it will be hotter. Not so cool. Furthermore, your injectors will hit 100% duty cycle, which sucks. So you gotta upgrade your turbo, your fuel pump, your fuel injectors, your ECU, and possibly your intercooler, to get more than 17psi of boost. And let's not even talk about the suspension. There is a SPT suspension for the STI ("inverted struts") that is adjustable. There are also the "pinks" springs which are JDM and better damped for the USDM struts. Either way, the suspension on the STI needs a little help in a few places. And apparently there's no horsepower to be gained in the intake. Although Subaru has told me there is. So get this. You buy a new STI for $35,000, and the first think you do is you go to the dealer and say "please to take off the turbo, put this turbo on, get rid of that ECU, we want this other one, add the perrin top mount intercooler, the pink injectors, and this MSD fuel pump. Oh, and we'd like boost at 20psi." So that's gonna set you back something like 10 grand, and you're gonna be making 400hp. All those little honda fuckers do it on credit cards. I'm a cash kind of person. I don't think that's a road I want to go down. Because when I blow a tranny, it's MY dime, not Fuji Heavy Industries. So, fuck that.
What we need for Arlington's Mr. Akina is a panda Trueno. If only all of them hadn't been rodded to shit already. If I could find one that was a liftback, original paint, original motor, and "needed a little work," I'd be all over that fucker. With cash. But nooooooo. I must conquer Mt. Akina in something that's going to cost me anywhere from $35,000 to $95,000. And include a car note.
Notice I didn't mention the Evo? That's because I don't have a face full of pimples, and I'm not 17.
I've said it before, I'll say it again.
Fuck. You. World.