Adventures of Unix boy in Windows land.

So for the last several years I have been a Unix administrator down in the SF Bay Area. Recently my family and I decided to move back to Chico. It is hard to find a job in Chico, but as luck would have it, I got a position back at the hospital where I used to work. The only problem with this so far is they are a total Windows shop. Not so much fun for a Unix guy.

On the bright side, I am getting to play with Citrix a lot.

So I thought I might spend some time telling you all about my adventures in Windows Land.

So far, I am still on my own laptop, running Ubuntu. I am sure everyone thinks I am crazy, just running a Windows VM via RDP. When I asked for a system, they said they were low on them, but could give me a thin client running off a VMWare server. I nixed the thin client and just started connecting via RDP. It is just I find it hard to give up my beloved operating system of choice for my little laptop. I suppose I could dual boot the thing, but that seems to me like giving in a bit.

So far... I don't feel hampered at all. It is a little harder to get files between my laptop and my VM, but that is really not too much of an issue for me, I kind of like the separation that the VM is able to give me. The only thing that I have had troubles with so far is getting a CD that was handed to me onto the VM. I am halfway thinking about just putting VMWare server on my laptop to solve this issue.

Another thing that is slightly annoying is getting clipboard from between RDP sessions, but I think I have that hunted down, will play with it on Monday. For posterity sake this thread seems to indicate that there are some cool command line configs I can run with the client. When will I learn to just read the stupid man pages?

It is my goal to show everyone that you can run linux just fine in a total Windows shop, and maybe keep a bit of a log about how this is going for me.

Barack Obama Needs to change his song

Everyone knows the song, Hail to the Chief
as the President's song


Well, I think Obama needs to change it to this One

Fun at Chuck E. Cheese

Any kid knows that Chuck E. Cheese is the bomb.

Any adult knows that Chuck E. Cheese is torture. So here is a fun way to entertain yourself at Chuck E. Cheese (or other such establishments)

No doubt, the thing that kids love the most about these places are the plethora of crappy prizes, worth $2, that they can win with those tickets the won by feeding all those games $20 of your money.

Used to be that the prize counter employee would count all those tickets, but that proved to be inefficient. Soon these places started just weighing the tickets. 50 Tickets = 1oz. (or whatever the number is).

Of course the weighing scheme was tragically flawed, as kids who were smarter then the employees (not too hard to find) figured out that wet tickets weigh more. So, off the little treasures would go to the restroom to wet their tickets, and suddenly 35 tickets = 1oz. So their 35 tickets will buy 50 tickets worth of booty.

I don't see how this could be a money loosing proposition for these places. They charge $40 for a Pizza, which really ends up costing you $45 when you factor in the antacid, then you spend another $20 on tokens to get $2.50 worth of Dollar Store trinkets that are sure to break in about 10 minutes, causing 20 minutes of crying.

Anyway, along came the best idea ever....


The ticket counting machine.

So this basically works like so: You get a bunch of tickets, feed them to the machine, it counts them for you and prints out a nice little piece of paper telling you how many tickets you have "won".

This does leave a small problem for the prize counter employee. You see, generally the kids will win a handful of tickets, get a printout, then go spend another handful of quarters. At the end of this adventure your little treasures end up with 5 or 6 of these slips. So here is the problem. How in the world is the prize counter employee to cope with having to add 34, 56, 92 and 147?

You will notice, at every prize counter, a simple calculator for performing such complex feats of mathematics.

Ok, so where is the fun in this? Get ready for it. This is the most fun thing for an adult to do at such an establishment. This takes some time, but I am sure you will find it well worth the effort when you see the effect.

When the kids come back to "Home Base" with their bounty of tickets, you simply take the tickets over to "the machine" and feed it one. Then press print. Then feed it another, and press print again, and again, and again... Yeah it takes some time, but the look on the face of the prize counter employee when you walk up to the counter with a stack of 253 slips of paper, With 1 ticket printed on each is really worth it.

Have fun with that.

Beware the automatic door

Okay, this confuses me to no end. Why is there a sign on every automatic door in the world that says "Caution"? I mean was there a rash of automatic door accidents that prompted this sign?

I don't even understand why it is necessary to use caution whilst entering an automatic door.

Often when approaching an automatic door I will alert any companions to the dangers ahead.

"BE CAREFUL!!!! There is an automatic door."

I postulate that far more people run into non-automatic doors thinking that the door will open for them, I have even seen this on occasion. I have never spied a sign saying "Caution, normal door". You would think that sign would come in more handy.