Vroom

Is it wrong that I want one of these.. as well as my Jeep. I mean, I can justify it can't I??? Well, probably not, but it's fun to dream anyway. What would I do with 425 horsepower? It's probably one of those things that you would never know until you tried it, I suppose!!!

Did I ever mention how much I hate Dell products? I mean not just dislike, or dismiss, but actively despise? Their server technology is probably about 5 years behind the competition, for one. Well, today was a reminder of what Dell's "world class service" was like. Just two weeks ago, it took me about a week and a half to convince Dell's corporate support people that, yes, we really DID need a replacement backup tape drive for one of our servers. They kept suggesting, "did you try this??"... "Did you try that??" in an attempt to apparently just make me give up trying, I guess. I finally had to, shall we say, "speak strongly" to get it through to them that I WANTED A NEW UNIT.

Anyway, today yet another of their backup tape units went bad, this time emitting a loud grinding/shrieking sound. So, I call Dell's tech "support" and got hold of "Rob", who was probably the rudest tech guy I have ever seen. After responding "no" to his question about whether we had rebooted the server several times to see if it would get the tape unit working.. (wha?? When it's the (external) tape unit that is making the noise? That makes no sense) He says (imagine the snottiest tone possible) "Well, most people would at least try a couple of reboots before they called in a problem..." Asshole. The rest of the conversation he was just rude and dismissive and I was starting to lose my cool. He did finally agree (begrudgingly) to replace the drive however.

The upshot to all this is that when I arrived at my desk this morning, what was waiting for me but a brand new laptop to replace my trusty and dependable IBM Thinkpad - which is being replaced. The new laptop's brand? Dell.

*screams*

Extreme Sports

Now, I know that I like to do some things as hobbies which some may consider fairly exciting, but I recently found this, which I don't think I will be participating in. I don't even like the non-extreme version. Want to know more? Click here.

I also think I suffer from this at work...

The WordSpy site looks pretty cool, by the way, with a lot new buzzwords/expressions.

Whither the Blog?

Wait a minute. I have a blog?? You woulda thought??!! Well, really, I know that I have been, uh, neglecting ye olde blog for quite a while now, but I decided that I should have a go at a post tonight.

As many of you probably know, it is now less than three weeks before I leave for my big trip to California and Arizona. I am REALLY looking forward to it, particularly the 4 day backpacking trip in the Grand Canyon.

However, in big(ger) news, some guys at work and I have finally gotten around to actually booking our trip to Nepal!! Yep, this October I will be trekking up the flanks of Everest. Don't feel bad, I'm sure it will be nothing special... HAHAHAHAHA. As if. I now still can't believe that we are actually going - it's like I'm in denial or something (even as as look at the printout of my flight itinerary as far as Hong Kong). Oh, and I'm going to Hong Kong!!! We get to spend a day (about 24hours) there on the way back.) That is just so cool.

The only thing that worries me a bit about the trip is the current political situation in Nepal, what with the Maoist insurgency and all. But, I've read quite a bit on the internet about how things are from the tourist point of view and it sounds like things are running as normal, with no problems. So, it sounds pretty good for that so far.

Interestingly, I actually feel more nervous about flying into the US than I am to Nepal - and the funny thing is I'm not worried about terrorism or anything, but rather the security people (especially at LAX). How sad is it that I'm more worried about that than the things that they are trying to prevent? I don't know, maybe it won't be so bad and you only hear the worst cases, but it does concern me a bit.

Anyway, I've got some interesting travel scheduled for this year - should be fun!