Month: June 2006

Categories
Reflected

New Template

It’s that once yearly time where I get tired of the layout I have and switch to an entirely different one.

This one finally cures something that’s always bothered me immensely about most MT themes – the artificial 500px content boundary. I’m sure 500px is great for keeping people focused on text, but it’s horrible if you want to post a picture with reasonable size.

This theme is “[darkhash](http://www.thestylecontest.com/designs/hash)”, with a couple tweaks to fit my overly particular nature. It’s my vote to win the [MT/LJ/TypePad Style Contest](http://www.thestylecontest.com/).

Some content has settled in transit and may be missing for the time being; it’ll be back soon, I promise.

UPDATE: I’ve ungimped the comment form, upped the font size to make the pages easier to read, increased the width a little, replaced a handful of icons, and added a tag cloud to the archives page. I appreciate the feedback I’ve gotten and certainly won’t mind getting more.

Categories
Created Endured

Work Anecdote 2: Flood!

The Flood

Looking Into Our Space

Break Out The Devil Duck

Shopvac Service With A Smile

As I was trying to track down a few people today, I noticed a large pool of water creeping into our new office space. In a low key manner I’ve come to understand is typical of me, I knocked on someone’s door and beckoned them towards it, quietly mentioning this large mass of water that had already infiltrated two offices.

Panic ensued. Panic with, thankfully, a lot of laughter. It wasn’t just our space that had the water running through it, the lowest floor of the library was also soaked – undoubtedly caused by the massive rainstorm. We kept our spirits high. Rubber duckies were dunked, cameras were deployed, and when facilities arrived with an armada of shopvacs, they were more than willing to pose for a photo or two.
It was the nice sort of ridiculous situation to end a week with.

(I have a few more pictures up under the tag workflood, if you’re bored.)

Categories
Enjoyed Happened

Work Anecdote 1: Speedy Delivery

Yesterday, I was told that one of the 250GB drive modules in one of our Xserve RAIDs had apparently gone kaput. While this is the first time I’ve seen this happen in two years, and it doesn’t affect production (horrah for hot spares!), we did need to get it replaced.
Today, at 2:45, I called Applecare Enterprise Support. 10 minutes later, I had a case number and a dispatch number.

At about 3:15, I got a call from the service courier, who wanted to confirm that I had the dispatch number, give me their number, and told me they’d be in touch Monday about scheduling a pickup for the dead drive.

I took a few minutes to run up to the unit in question and swap out the dead 250GB for a spare 400GB, just as a temporary lest we have another failure over the weekend.

At 4:40, I got a call from our front desk, saying that there was someone here with a package. I scratched my head, not putting two and two together (for reasons to be detailed in the next anecdote), and told the desk where to send them.
Five minutes later, a courier appeared with the drive module.

Literally two hours from when I called, I had my replacement hardware in hand.

I realize this is not typical, but man oh man, that was lightning quick. Kudos to Applecare Enterprise.