Geeky Bob

A friend of mine recently sent me the following video from Weird Al Yankovic, who is one of my favorite geek heroes.

As someone who has worked in the business world for the past few decades, I have to admit: the corporate-speak in that video is much pretty spot-on for some division-level meetings that I've attended.

That being said, Weird Al's song reminds me of my days in a cross-site technical support team that I helped create at Microsoft, which was supposed to be an amalgamation of two commonly-used technical support roles of beta engineers and escalation engineers. However, the role of that team quickly spiraled out of control into something that was totally unrecognizable from what I had proposed. Our team was renamed by a corporate president as "Delta Force," and despite the fact that everyone hated the name, we were stuck with it - because it came from a corporate president.

Getting back to the original point, I knew this team was screwed when Microsoft flew all of the team members to Redmond for a week when we were first starting out. The goals for the week were supposed to be creating the hierarchy and infrastructure that were required to organize and manage a large cross-site team, but we were bogged down for the first 1.5 days creating - seriously - our Mission Statement. It didn't matter how many times I pointed out that we could be using our time and Microsoft's resources considerably more efficiently if we tabled that discussion; I kept getting shot down by management, who continuously emphasized just how important a Mission Statement really is.

At some point during that week I marched into my new boss's office and told him (in no uncertain terms) that I wanted off that team as soon as possible. (Although he begged me to stay, and I did - for 1.5 years. And I hated almost every minute of it.)

With that in mind, the video from Weird Al was a fun [sic] reminder of that time.

I just read this article, Pompeii victim crushed by boulder while fleeing eruption, which details a recent archeological discovery in Italy. The unfortunate soul in these photos from that article has to be one of the least-lucky people to have ever walked the face of the planet:

This doomed individual survived the initial eruption of Mount Vesuvius near Pompeii, only to have his head crushed by a rock during the subsequent eruption.

Sometimes, it's just not your day...

When you somehow manage to bump the camera button on your phone in its waterproof case during a desert ride and it creates an experimental bokeh-art film in your honor...

Just in time for April Fool's Day, here are some new HTML tags for useless text.

<BLAH></BLAH>

<BLAB></BLAB>

A friend of mine posted the following image to social media... and as someone who has had to attend more than a few soul-crushing phone conferences, I thought it was hilarious.

That being said, I thought this play set was missing a few things that would add to its realism.

For example, why doesn't it come with a whiteboard and four dried-out markers?

In addition, the conference phone should come with dozens of lifelike features, such as Dropped Calls, Random Static, Open Microphone Keyboard Typing, Private Background Conversations, and 15 minutes of 'Can You Hear Me?' dialog. This would turn your kids' 5-minute meeting into hours of troubleshooting entertainment - every time!

A few years ago I wrote a blog titled "Adventures with the Tooth Werewolf", where I wrote about how I rose my children with a belief in the Tooth Werewolf instead of the Tooth Fairy. In that same blog I also briefly mentioned that I had come up with the Easter Vampire instead of the Easter Bunny. (I'll bet you wish your parents had been this cool, right?)

That being said, one of my daughters sent me the following video, which she appropriately-labeled, "The Easter Vampire?"

In honor of "Pi Day" (3/14), here are the first 256 digits of Pi set to music... (which was achieved by taking the numbers in Pi and overlaying them on a C major scale).

At first I thought about overlaying the digits on a pentatonic scale to create a little more harmony, but it turns out that it wasn't necessary. (Of course, the bass line and drum parts add a lot, too.)

I also thought about doing something with a pentatonic scale, but as I said earlier it didn't appear to need it. I also thought using about some sort of timing extraction from the numbers in Pi instead of using 8th notes, but most of my experiments started to sound far too random and chaotic.

FWIW - I also did a version in 7/8 time, just 'cause... you know... RUSH.

Here is my truthful rendition of what piano players think they sound like when they attempt to talk while playing the piano, versus what they actually sound like to everyone else around them.

Note that the preceding video is by-product of the author's sarcastic nature and created for entertainment purposes only. Time signatures, tempos, keys, chords and embellishments are either the products of the author's imagination or used in a facetious manner. Any resemblance to pianists, living, dead, or undead, or actual music is purely coincidental.

Is it just me, or is watching the wind patterns on https://earth.nullschool.net/ oddly mesmerizing?

In honor of Veteran's Day, I thought I'd share an amusing story from my first days in the Army. One of the infamous Murphy's Laws of Combat states, "When you have secured an area, don't forget to tell the enemy." While the following anecdote isn't exactly what is meant by that statement, my situation always reminds me of that saying.

From April through June of 1986, I attended Basic Training in Fort Leonard Wood (FLW), Missouri. (Or, as we trainees liked to call it, "Fort Lost-in-the-Woods, Misery.") At the time, Basic Training was eight weeks long, during which trainees were taught all of the basic essentials for becoming a soldier; combat skills, physical fitness, navigation, communications, first aid, and - of course - basic marksmanship.

The standard-issue rifle at the time was the M-16A1, and soldiers were taught to fire from several positions: prone, sitting, and standing supported in a foxhole. However, foxholes on the FLW ranges were not actual foxholes; they were culvert pipes buried vertically in the ground, with wood pallets in the bottom on which shorter soldiers could stand to gain a little more height, and each foxhole was fitted with a wood cover to keep the rain out at night. (At least in theory; I still spent a lot of time in the mud at the bottom of a foxhole...)

All of that being said, on one particular occasion, our company had an unexpected lesson in checking out your environment before settling in. One of the ranges had 40 foxholes arranged in a single firing line, and I was assigned to lane #1. We were the first trainees on the range, so the first order of action was for everyone to uncover their foxhole for that day's marksmanship training.

When the Range Safety NCO in the tower gave the appropriate command over the range loudspeaker, everyone pulled the cover off their foxhole, and then everyone but me jumped in. However, I actually looked down before jumping in; that was a very good thing for me to do, because I saw the tail end of a black snake slither under the wood pallet at the bottom of my foxhole. I spent part of my childhood living near the Florida swamps, so I knew of several black snakes with which no one should be taking any chances, so I simply stood up and raised my hand for assistance.

The Range Safety NCO saw me from his lofty perch in the tower, and he bellowed over the loudspeaker, "Lane 1: what is your problem???"

As loudly as I could, I shouted back, "Snake, Drill Sergeant!"

And then I watched as the soldiers in firing lanes 2 through 40 looked beneath them in panicked unison to see if they had snakes in their foxholes; it was suddenly and abundantly obvious that I had been the only trainee who had bothered to check his foxhole before jumping in. (Note: No one else had an uninvited visitor; I was the only 'lucky' one.)

One of the drill sergeants quickly made his way down the firing line to my foxhole, whereupon he grabbed my M-16, jumped into the foxhole, and proceeded to beat the snake to death with the butt of my rifle. Once the snake - which turned out to be a lethally-venomous Water Moccasin - was good and dead, the drill sergeant climbed out of the foxhole, returned my M-16 to me, and headed back down the firing line to check on the other trainees.

With my area secured and my miniscule misadventure at an end, I finally climbed down into my foxhole, and I proceeded to blast lots of little holes in the downrange targets.