This tech guy hates... (rant)

It's not mine, I'm holding it for a friend.

*WARNING RANT LOCATED*

Apple, That's right, Apple. No, it's not just a hatred of their business practices, their closed attitude, or the fact that everyone who uses an Apple can be grouped into the stereotype of being a: "hipster", or a "graphic artist", or a "smug bastard"; although those reasons are the easiest ones to pull from a hat when someone asks me why.

No, the real reason that I hate Apple is because of the fact that they insist on printing EVERYTHING in a "post script" mode by sheer default. If I asked you to look at your printers right now, right this very moment, you would probably think I am a crazy person (If you didn't already). Your printer drivers for your machines, assuming all of the current readers aren't on a Mac, are most likely of the PCL5 or 6 variety. Why does that matter at all?

Technically the type of printer driver doesn't really matter, except for the fact that nearly everyone in the world uses Printer Control Language (PCL), in fact it is so widely used that most people do not know that there is anything else. I work for Sharp in one of their buildings that sells: copiers, printers, and other such. Since I live and work within the world of printers, I come across printers and MFPs from almost every company imaginable and it is very hard to find a printer driver in a production environment that does not use PCL6. Post script is so rare in this line of work that special add-on software and firmware packages have to be enabled in order to allow the printers to function in that mode for almost every device.

Normally I would not care, except for the fact that when I have to help a customer (being both a network admin and a copier connection specialist) who wants to print on a Mac. A whole 99% of the time the users who purchased a Mac expecting that they will "just work" like the ad in the paper said. Most of them have heard fabled stories of people coming back from the "Great-Apple-Store-in-the-Fashion-Mall" and all of their devices magically work for them. These stories, usually involve someone and their iPhone and their Music collection . . . not the usual office production environment. So it comes to them as a surprise that they must not, not only download a whole new set of printer drivers, but also purchase an add-on (which aren't cheap) to get the Post Script option to work.

Now I know what you're thinking, "Gee, Wes, if this happens so often then it isn't a rarity!" And I would say, "shut your mouth" and you would probably get angry with me. Most of these users are the one-off worker in an environment of Microsoft machines that now needs to be catered to, costing me my sanity as a Copier connection specialist, and causing friction between my new IT contact in the building (who now hates me because I have ensured that he will now cater to the unusual needs of the Mac).

Why do I hate Apple? BECAUSE They're different enough to cause problems. I don't care that they want to be different, I don't care that they insist on being different (look at me), I just wish that they would allow for backwards compatibility, to relieve me of my headaches, and ease the transition of others.

*END OF RANT*

Anniversary for this tech guy.

Well, it would seem that today is the day that, not only am I thankful for my wife (which I am everyday), but also the day in which we celebrate our anniversary. Now since I'll reminisce about that day, you'll have to excuse me if there are no pictures of the events to which I'll describe, I'm just making up the pictures as I go along.

 Two years ago today we were married, and if you're doing the math on how old my child is...well...then you can probably figure out just how quickly we went from: "married on our own" to "married and expecting" if you can't figure it out...well then YOU need to go back to health class.

Here's a hint

All kinds of memories are fresh in my mind (and they should be, it was only 2 years ago): Bachelor party, the heavy drinking, the broken furnace. 

Oh yeah, the broken furnace.

So funny thing. I woke up at around 7 am that day, not because I was nervous, but because my house was colder than Hilary Clinton on a hot day (read: frost on windows). During the night my furnace decided to take a shit and die...well...die is such a harsh word...more like refused to work.

it was an old furnace

One thing leads to another, and before you know it, my house is mind numbingly cold. The whole party is now all trying to get dressed in our tuxedos and attempt to fix my furnace by telling it just how much we loved it and would cherish it forever. Not really, we gutted it and disassembled it on the floor and passed the pieces to each member of the groomsmen who were then scrubbing each and every piece until it shined. Meanwhile me and my friend are now elbow deep in the furnace (possibly inhaling the gas, not sure) seeing what else we can take out before we decide to put it back together again.

It goes red, red, blue, orange, blue, army-man-lodged-in-pipe, right?

After about 3 hours of on and off cleaning and rubik-tetris style assembly we had the whole thing fixed. All that was left was to let the furnace run (and burn up at least 100 dollars to heat the house back up) and get to the ceremony's location, oh, and feverishly brush off all of the dust and soot from our tuxes without looking like we were dusting off the soot and dust...because if my wife found out...crap she just did...she WILL most likely kill / maim me with interest up to today.

So if you're in the neighborhood, I'm probably in traction right now while me and the wife look back on all of the pictures we had taken of that day.

Seriously, help, my wife is.........

oh, hey...never mind.

The short of it is, this day is the best, and I thank the maker for everyday that I have with my wife. Now if you'll excuse me I have to schedule my Anniversary Dinner around Thanksgiving Dinner (becacuse if I fill her up on Turkey then my dinner will be cheaper...just kidding...I love you Christina please don't hurt me)

HAPPY ANNIVERSARY CHRISTINA EMMERT!!!

Fifteen month old knows animal noises

Well, if my daughter isn't the cutest thing ever, even though she's just fifteen months she already knows animals and their noises. Unfortunately the only one I was able to "voluntarily" get her to do was the pig noise, after that she realized I was videoing her and got shy. Regardless of the end result, it's hard to not be amazed at what this little girl can do.

Enjoy

Juggling "disaster" amuses my daughter.

What is this? Two posts in a day? well, unless it's a weekend, this situation may or may not come up a lot. The point is, you never know what I'll have to share.

Like today, when my daughter thought my little juggling routine was incredibly hilarious, I thought I'd video it and share it with the world.

Enjoy!

A techie gives you coffee advice

Look at that sexy man

Technical nerds like myself and business types alike, heck even the normal everyday homebody sure enjoy their coffee. There is one thing I dislike when it comes to the coffee situation, it's when I make a pot and leave 1 cup alone all day long and it gets cold.
Coffee lovers like myself are probably the first ones to yell out Sinner! when the concept of leaving perfectly good coffee out to be wasted. well now, fret no more while I spin you my simple tale of how I solved such a problem not 10 minutes ago.

THE PROBLEM

Personally, for me the thought of drinking cold coffee is disgusting, and equally as disgusting as going to a coffee shop and ordering their Wacky, crazy drinks, worst of all is pouring what would have been perfectly good coffee down the drain. Now I like to drink coffee all hours of the day, sometimes it's great to have in the afternoon so when I reached for my pot in order to make myself more coffee I realized that I had entire cup that I hadn't drank yet. I solved this problem in a less overly sugary fashion and more palatable concoction that I wouldn't mind having again in the future.

THE PREP

all of the ingredients (minus a few sips of the final result)

What do I have in the house? A glass, yes, I have a glass. Some flavoring, yes, I have some Hershey's syrup that I use for ice cream. Milk, yes, I eat cereal so I have milk. Cold coffee, why yes, that is why I am writing this. So: Glass, Milk, Hershey's syrup, Cold coffee; I have everything I need, time to get started.

THE RECIPE

Taking the cup I filled it with about 1/4 cup of milk, I figured that 1/4 cup was all that I needed since it wouldn't be more than any amount of milk than I or anyone else would add to any amount of coffee anyways. Seeing as I don't normally add milk to coffee I had to wager a guess. Secondly, I added my cold coffee to the milk and filled it to the top.

By this time the taste was still too, cold coffee-ish. Which is when I slowly added some Hershey's syrup to the mixture in order to bring it to a taste I could tolerate:  a touch of milk and just enough coffee flavor to enjoy it (your results may vary).

THE RESULT

What I ended up with was a coffee drink that allowed me to not have to throw out my cold coffee, and still enjoy it without having to resort to having to avoid "Hipsters" at a coffee shop. Since it had very little sugar (aside from what naturally was in any of the ingredients, Hershey's syrup not withstanding) it didn't taste like sugar milk with coffee.

So think about that next time, when you end up with cold coffee that would be normally undrinkable. Don't pour it out, you might just like what you make.

Non-Linear Blog

GREETINGS ALL

YAY!!! I've deleted all of my old posts in favor of starting anew...the only caveat is that I will not try to run my blog / site the way that I tried to in the past: up to the minute blogs, up to the minute opinion posts, etc; Instead I will post relevant information that I want to pass on.

While it is true that I can do that in Facebook and Google+ I feel that this would be a great forum if I anticipate my post on Google+ or Facebook would be just too long to bring up there. There have been several situations where I post a lot of information to Google and Facebook, knowing full well that when I hit post, most people will read the first few sentences and decide not to hit the "more info" link. I wouldn't say that it is because I'm a shitty writer or a crappy typist, but those venues tend to offer more in the way of relevant information as long as it is a short and sweet post.

So Like this post here, which would be entirely too long for Facebook or Google+ under normal situations, I will create it here and link to it.

Consider yourself warned LOL.

ABOUT ME

What is there to know about me? Well, the most important question is, what do people NOT want to know about me?

I'm sure that people don't want to know that I'm a raging Techno-geek, or that I crank up the bandwidth at my home watching Netflix almost all the time. I'm also fairly certain that people don't want to know my horrid back story spanning 27 years of weird-as-hell coincidences involving: prisons, car chases, blatant prostitution, and...well...those were all false, I just tried to make things seem interesting.

All except the 27 years.

I'm a computer network admin / technician for Sharp Electronics Corp. I'm married and I have my own house where I live with my beautiful wife and awesome daughter. Expect a lot of bragging about my daughter, seriously, I mean a lot. Why? She's 15 months and can already consistently verbally and non-verbally communicate and consistently convey her thoughts to me and my wife, enough of that for right now.

I spend my days working on computers and networks and my Wife spends her weekends (not all of them) doing Pure Romance parties, of which I believe she has more fun doing that just about anything else. Check her out if you'd like.

In the end, I'm just like you: lovable and cuddly (at least I'd like to think so).