I am the goat man of alcatraz

Dear Diary,

Whoa momma, busy morning so far.

Last night my car died. I need to call Triple A and have them tow my car to my house. My fan belt flew off, and I didn't notice, because my power steering already didn't work, and it blew up my engine or something. You could tell from the smell of blown up engine when I parked my car (and from the rattle rattle rattle that my car doesn't usually say when I drive it).

So I need a new car. Crackbaby drove us to work this morning. He hates to drive, and I don't know why. His car isn't in nearly as bad shsape as he thinks it is, I know this. I mean come on! He has power steering, brakes that work, power everything that works most the time, all four wheels roll in the same direction. Hell he even has keys that work in the doors.

I had none of these things, and I still drove my car.

Here is the list of the things that are wrong with my car:

Brakes - Just Brakes (who's motto should be Just Brakes: "Just Don't Do It" or maybe just simply call them unJust Breaks or maybe even, "I'm going to fscking screw up your car in such a way you don't notice for 6 months and then send you a bill") ... Just brakes fubar'ed my brakes about 6 months ago when they connected a brake line. Apparantly they decided that they'd need to take off all four my brakes to fix this issue, and put them on at an angle so my brakes would wear down faster, so now everything in my brake system needs replacing, as well as my brake lines, because they were borderline anyways.

Which leads me to my ...

Tires - Which are also messed up because of the brake problem ... my wheels lock because of the brake problem, so it has totally messed with my treads.

Fluids - All of them need replacing. Oil, brake fluid, transmission fluid, engine coolant, windsheild wiper fluid, power steering fluid, etc.

Windshield - The windshield is cracked.

Spark Plugs - I have 2 spark plugs that fire right now. Out of 6.

Transmission - My transmission is about to give out, it hesitates before shifting, then slams into gear.

Fan Belt Episode - Whatever lasting damage I caused by driving it 3 miles without the fan belt.

A/C - Oh yeah, and my A/C is stuck on defrost.

Radio - Radio works fscking great, thanks for asking. I think I'll go sit in my car and not drive and listen to my fscking great radio and no I'm not bitter.

There are probably more issues with it, but this is a nice list, and the point is I paid about $2000 bucks for the car, and it will cost more than that to fix it.

So I don't have a car. And Crackbaby has this car that's essentially a family heirloom that still runs, I don't think there are going to be many issues with it breaking down but that's just a hunch.

So anyone have a cheap car?

Anyway busy morning.I guess. Meetings all day. And I have to figure out the interface to this compiler so I can put out my program tomorrow. And that's all I have to say about that.

/rizzn

Quote of the Entry: "I have an obsession with bracelets. I wear atleast 25 to school everyday, and everyday I receive atleast 30 comments about them. Mostly always "Hey, you wear a lot of bracelets". I'm like- "Hey, I put them on this morning, I think I would know by now!"

- leah

I have a Pot collection

Dear Diary,

I invented a new game at work today.

I have this multi-pocketed container thingy on my desk, looks really Scandanavian in design, it's designed to hold pens.

Well, now it's part of a skeeball staplegun game I invented called Jack-Off-and-Not-Work. The object is to avoid doing real work by shooting a stapler into the multi-pocketed thing, awarding yourself arbitrary numbers of points based upon which pocket it goes into. Whoever wastes the most time wins.

I like to play it by myself. That way I'm always a winner.

/rizzn

Quote of the Entry: "... Yeah, I'm asking the same questions. "

- crackbaby talking about guess who!! (psst, it's me)

Smitey Things

Dear Diary,

Did you know that my roommate's website was one of 7 hits that google pulls up containing the words free and beastiality in them?

I found this out by analyzing his hitlogs. Click here to see Crackbaby's ranking in the free beastiality world.

Oh, and 2000-08-24 11:05:03 PM 199.35.103.22 cld-oh6c-22.rasserver.net, you are one sick fsck!

/rizzn

Quote of the Entry: "What would YOU have me do whilst I pretend to work?! Page through some grossly bizarre, yet oddly fascinating website about electronic hamsters?! ... If I wouldn't have to get up and move i'd smite you with a big smitey thing! Get the crackpipe out of whatever orifice you've stuffed it in and get to work!!!"

- Bliss

Phlegm is great, Phlegm is good. Except when waiters phlegm in food.

Dear Diary,

Sometimes when I don't update, it's for your benefit.

Take this for instance. This is what I sit down and write all day for the last week:

MIDI Converted RTX Ringtone File Specifications v0.3

(first revision)

(compliant with the RTX Ringtone specification v0.1)

8-14-00

=================

1. Header Chunk

------------------

The Standard "Header Chunk" for a midi file begins with the hexidecimal codes:

3d 54 68 64 00 00 00 06 ff ff nn nn dd dd

The ascii equivalent of the first 4 bytes is "MThd" .. After the "MThd" comes the 4-byte size of the header. This will always be 00 00 00 06, because the actual header information will always be 6 bytes.

ff ff is the file format. This value will always be equal to 00 00.

nn nn is the number of tracks in the midi file. This value will always be equal to 00 01.

dd dd is the number of delta-time ticks per quarter note. This will always be equal to 00 60.

So the standard "Header Chunk" will always be the following:

3d 54 68 64 00 00 00 06 00 00 00 01 00 60

This will always appear at the beginning of every translated MIDI file from RTX to MIDI.

Fun stuff, eh?

That's what's new in my life.

Oh, yeah, except for having strep throat and generally being miserable about that whole deal.

59 6f 75 72 4e 65 77 52 69 6e 67 54 75 6e 65 3a

I wonder if i might get in trouble for sleeping on the floor at work. It looks mighty comfy.

Sheesh, can you believe they were out of O.J. in the cafeteria?

Yes, sometimes I like to post song lyrics that inspire me too on my diary. So sue me!

Beans beans wonderful fruit,
The more you eat, the more you toot.
The more you toot, the better you feel!
Let's eat beans for every meal!

/rizzn

Quote of the Entry: "Beans are neither wonderful nor a fruit."

- Bart Simpson

Staple Guns are Fun. Yay Happee!

Dear Diary,

Don't you just hate it when you are sitting in your office thinking of something to do and someone walks in and catches you absentmindedly and repeatedly shooting staples across your desk?

I think that's embarrassing.

/rizzn

Quote of the Entry: "Sing it again, Scott! You are hotter then Enrique. "

- super fast kel

Internal Nokia Memo written while formulating RTX Ringtone File Specs

MIDI Converted RTX Ringtone File Specifications v0.3 (first revision)
(compliant with the RTX Ringtone specification v0.1)
8-14-00
=================

1. Header Chunk
------------------

The Standard "Header Chunk" for a midi file begins with the hexidecimal codes:

3d 54 68 64 00 00 00 06 ff ff nn nn dd dd

The ascii equivalent of the first 4 bytes is "MThd" .. After the "MThd" comes the 4-byte size of the header. This will always be 00 00 00 06, because the actual header information will always be 6 bytes.

ff ff is the file format. This value will always be equal to 00 00.

nn nn is the number of tracks in the midi file. This value will always be equal to 00 01.

dd dd is the number of delta-time ticks per quarter note. This will always be equal to 00 60.

So the standard "Header Chunk" will always be the following:

3d 54 68 64 00 00 00 06 00 00 00 01 00 60

This will always appear at the beginning of every translated MIDI file from RTX to MIDI.

2. Translating the control section of an RTX file.
---------------------------------------------------

Information from the control section of a standard RTX file will be held in the "Track Chunk" of the MIDI file. The beginning of the "Track Chunk" will always begin with the following:

4d 54 72 6b

The ascii equivalent of the first 4 bytes is "MTrk".

Following the "MTrk" is a four byte section the is equal to the length of the track.

ll ll ll ll

It would most likely be easiest to calculate this value last and insert it after the rest of the track has been formulated, as the length of the track will be dependant on how long the song itself lasts.

Following the length property is the delta-time. This value for all intents and purposes should be equal to zero, unless a slight delay before the beginning of the song is desired. It is a variable length property, but it requires at least one byte of information to be present if no delta-time is required.

howdy from the land of no car

Dear Diary,

Wow. 2 days that I've worked at work. It's some kind of record.

Although tomorrow we can expect that to come to a screeching halt, as it is meeting day tomorrow. I have at least 2 or 3 hours of meetings that I know are already scheduled. Yay.

So what has Mr. Rizzn been doing at work? I'm working on coding a super secret plugin. Don't tell anyone, because I could get fired if someone outside the company found out. But it converts one format of file to another, and I have to do hexadecimal coding, which is about as much fun as pulling out my chest hair, but it is challenging enough to keep it interesting.

The best part is that all the coding tools I have are 16-bit or worse and the platforms I have to work with today are 32-bit or better. Translation: I can't do sh!t.

Except print out documentation, write on my white board, and generally look busy and/or hard at work. Why even as I type this document into notepad it appears to the casual passerby/boss that I am writing documentation. Wow. How industrious would that be? They must think that I kick a lot of buttocks or something.

Someone told me I was cute in an email today. Cool!

Note to self: write neural os documentation.

Cool, that Norwegian chick Mette is coming over to talk to me.

-- several minutes later --

Darn, no small talk, she just was handing me a work order item. Oh well, she's too old for me anyways. At least in her mind. I think she's cute. And she's Norwegian.

On a serious note, everyone pray for my Godmother/Aunt Jidgie... she's my favorite aunt and she's in the hospital and in intensive care. Thanks.

And I'm going to try to take a nap before I have to go pick Crackbaby up from work. TTFN!

/rizzn

Quote of the Entry: "As I said to Kelly, "Life is retarded!"

- Kat

Kevin the Crackhead

Dear Diary,

Give me a call.

It will be fu-uun.

I will make it fu-uuun.

We'll stick things where the sun don't shine.

heheheh.

/rizzn

Everything I Ever Needed to Know I Learned in Corporate America

Dear Diary,

I am more than a little peaved that my co-werkers laptop which I am assigned to sucks more

than words can express. I just lost a 10 page diary entry because the CTRL key just randomly lost it's functionality. What the hell.

ANYWAYS, I title this entry

Surviving in Corporate America
or
Everything I Ever Needed to Know I Learned in Corporate America

Do you know what an action item is? you might be a corp suit.

When someone tells you they need to "take that offline with you" and you aren't on a computer when they say that, you might be a corp suit.

I sit today in my personal office high atop the 5th floor of 9 total floors in the building one of the Irving Nokia compound, surveying the downtown Dallas skyline, which I can barely see over my mountain of a fax machine. And I look up and wonder where everyone went! Why, it's lunch time! Hold on folks, I'll be back in two hours to finish this entry.

Wow! The department head felt sorry for me all alone in this office working off just simply a laptop and said that he's going to pull some strings to get me a docking station and a real keyboard! Yay!!

heheh. Back now.

At any rate.... let me give you an example of CorpSpeak... let me quote you an edited for CYA (cover yer ass) reasons company email I received from the bigwig boss person over our particular department.

Lesson One: Learning Proper Corporate Behavior

"...At the 7/21 meeting, one of the action items* assigned to my team was to investigate the possibility of developing an interim** [project name] which would incorporate [stupid feature] by October 1, 2000. Several members of my group have completed this evaluation***, and the earliest we could provide [stupid feature] would be 3 1/2 months after a carrier has approved the project plan, which does not meet the timing requirements for a 4th quarter launch..."

* Action Items. Who the hell says that sh!t?

** Okay, can we try to think of a few more words to stick in there to make the expression of a very simple idea take even more screen space?

*** Yeah, what she doesn't mention is that the evaluation took two weeks to complete. Um, excuse me, but in any design job I've ever had, if I took two weeks to complete a job as simple as what this one is, much less spend two weeks flossing my butt thinking about what it would take to do it I wouldn't have said job!

This my friends, is why my job rules. When you work for corporations with expectations as low as this, you'd really have to be a rhesus monkey to come up with a plan that will dissappoint them. No disrespect to my rhesus monkey friends intended, of course.

Lesson Two: Let's have a meeting!

When in attendance of a meeting, you will no doubt pick up on the rules of behavior fairly quickly. It's best to shower once a month, whether you need to or not, because when you are in a room with a bunch of people who are bored out of their skulls, they take to looking around the room and notice inane things about your appearance. This is probably the sole reason why corporate dress in enforced. They figure if everyone looks the same, there will be nothing to pay attention to, so they might pay attention to the subject at hand.

Also, what the subject matter of the meeting is can possibly be as important as your appearance, if not more so, sometimes, so be prepared! Listening skills are a must, even if you pick up on only one or two points in a meeting, chances are, they are probably all that is getting covered if your meeting is less than 4 hours long. Very seldom will you have more that 5 total bullet points to remember. The reason for this, I have found, is that most corporate meeting attendees like to draw, and aren't very bad artists at all, and when one has more than 3-4 bullet points to write down, you start running out of valuable doodling space.

Another good use of your listening skill can be put to use in a meeting environment by repeating what another person has just stated in the meeting. See Example 2a.

Example 2a

Person #1: Okay, what we have here is a black ink pen. The outside casing on the pen is blue, it has the word Nokia printed on it, with the slogan "Connecting People" directly below that, printed in white. The cap of the pen is red, with a green tip on the cap.

Person #2: So what I hear you saying is that this blue pen actually writes in black ink.

Person #1: Not only that, but it has a red cap and a green tip.

Person #3: I think what really needs to be emphasized in our marketing schemes is that Nokia is connecting people, if you know what I mean. I think that prominently displaying this on the pen is a good first step, and the choice of white print for this is generally a good idea.

Person #1: Has a focus group study been conducted on the effects of white print on a blue pen casing been held to determine what effect this will have on our companie's growth?

Person #4: My personal team has been assigned an action item to begin evaluating what it would take to coordinate a focus group that encompasses not only that subject but what impact in our sales patterns a green tipped red cap could mean to our end user.

Person #1: Good good, this is progress, so possibly by Quarter 3 of 2002, do you think we might be able to get this pen in the public's hands?

Person #5: So far our beta test team has only found enough bugs in the system to delay launch of the pen for another quarter. But we'll keep working on it [ed: this guy's obviously on the tech team]

So long folks. Have a great day!

/rizzn

Quote of the Entry: "Rizzn sucks donkey dick."
- crackbaby