So I’ve been on the job, this makes week 4. I got paid at last – for ONE FUCKING week of work. They hold two weeks. Dicks!
Oh and the place uses Sharepoint. Its Microsoft’s retarded version of Concurrent Versioning or CVS. For instance, you upload a bunch of files and then get complaints because others can’t see them. Turns out that you have to set properties and then check them all in. That’s retarded.
So I just completed my third week at the new job. I’ve got access to a few servers and such.
But here’s the thing. I was poking through /var/log/auth.log – it’s where every login/logout gets recorded. I first brought it up in vi and paged through and noted a lot of root activity. Some of it sudo, some of it direct root. Then I got out of vi and piped the file through grep looking for just my user id. A few of those. Ok.
Then I did grep -v ‘username’ /var/log/auth.log|awk ‘{print $11}’
I’ll walk you through what the hell that is all doing.
The first part that says grep -v ‘username’ – that sets up the exclusion.
The /var/log/auth.log is the path to the file.
Then there’s the | or pipe character. One of the cooler things about Unix/Linux is you can pipe output from one utility directly into another. So in this case I shot it to awk and used the print function to extract the 11th field of text after whitespace. That’s the user ID.
And I noted it all came back root. So then I piped it to wc -l which wc stands for word count. Yep – all root logins, several hundred of them in fact.
So other than root I’m the only person logging into these servers. Interesting.
So I know, I know. You’re taught to drive defensively. But this post is about the offensive driving I’ve seen just this weekend in and about the Warwick, East Greenwich, North Kingstown and Newport areas.
The first offense was at a commercial drag in NK. I’m in the left lane and this jerk with a pickup truck pulls in from the left he swings INTO MY LANE! Asshole!
And please – I’ve posted before on how speed limits are set artificially low in order to increase traffic violation revenue. For example, I’m old enough to remember prior to the energy crisis the speed limit on I-95 through Rhode Island was 70MPH. Now it’s 50 or 55MPH until you get down around exit 10 or so and then rises to 65MPH. But here’s the thing, try doing the legal limit. Try not getting run over. Try. Because that highway moves at 70-80MPH now.
So it hit me today – instead of setting the maximum speed limit for a highway why not set a minimum of say 80MPH in the left lane.
That’s the other thing – get the fuck out of the left lane if you’re gonna do the speed limit. As I do more highway driving I find a certain aggressive behavior emerging on my part. When I come upon an ass wipe in the left lane I had once tried flashing the beams. People in RI don’t know what that means. So I do what you’d naturally do. No, not pass on the right. I get right on your fucking bumper. And big surprise, people in RI move right when you do that now. Yay!
And while I’m on the high horse – maybe we need to revise drivers education and the manuals. Because it’s pretty obvious the jig is up regards speeding. The cars we have today are much tighter than cars of old. They’ve got traction control, automatic braking, adaptive cruise control, and direct port electronic fuel injection. Cars have oomph again.
And lets face it – I know that going from 70MPH to 0MPH in the space of a few seconds will make your insides leap outside. But it’s a risk you take. And I figure maybe I’m not so much an offensive driver, I tend to leave long distances between me and other cars on a normal basis, I signal lane changes, etc. But I am an aggressive s well head up north of 85MPH because the end would come much faster at that speed.
So maybe I’m not so much an offensive driver, I tend to leave long distances between me and other cars on a normal basis, I signal lane changes, etc. But I am an aggressive driver as evidenced above.
But one blew my mind earlier. I was coming down Division Road in East Greenwich and come upon a stop sign. I actually come to a complete stop. Jerk face behind me flashes his beams at me. Yo fucker – you’re lucky. I’d take the lights out of your car and shove them up your ass. Every time the power goes out all you have to do is bend over.
Not a new restaurant per se but new to me. The Red Fez. It’s in downtown Providence sort of sits right across from District Court otherwise known as he Garrahy building. When you enter there is a restaurant on the ground floor, but you can ascend the stairs and you’re immediately greeted by an elks head at the top of the stairs. The place is all done up in red too – the bar is lit up in red, it’s interesting. And there are tables and booths upstairs too. Sort of cool.
I had the chorico/beef mix burger with cheddar and bacon. It’s all pretty much standard fare but well seasoned and cooked. We all sort of noshed on burgers, fries, mac and cheese, etc.
And one of us got way too drunk to the point of what appeared to be alcohol poisoning and me getting slightly vomited upon in the car. Oops. Luckily I can handle puke. And I had to tell the driver to stop the car – upon which the party who blew the cookies proceeded to have a rather disgusting sounding puke out on the street.
And this morning that party was barely functional. I had suggested that a liter of water, some pain reliever and caffeine may be in order. Still too early to tell if the party will survive.
Now to the music in the place. Some of it had a punk sound to it which I liked. Much of it was simple thrashing shit. But not nearly as abhorrent as say techno.
So today I got a rare treat. I got to touch one of these:
Yeah – that part at the end of the subject – it’s a genetic sequencing machine. Way too cool. They’re about the size of say an older HP LaserJet 5si.
The reason I had to touch them today was to get the correct serial numbers off them. Only way to do is is to go into the config menu and it displays there. It’s a totally graphical interface too, very slick! But it’s not just the machine in the image, there’s some computing horsepower behind it.
So I had my Samsung SGH-T599N synchronized via bluetooth to my friends Ford. When we left the car I took the phone with me and then when I came back re-sync’d it. Problem was – it locks out all the controls when you do that.
I looked and you can in fact update the Sync software on the car. I’ll have to apply the update to my friends car and see if that fixes the bug I found.
So lately I’ve been driving from Warwick/East Greenwich, RI to Newport RI. That involves getting on RI-4 South, then Route 1 South and RI-138 East.
My thoughts on RI-4 are who the hell builds a highway and then puts two crossroads with signals on said highway. Christ on a stick, make over or under passes for those roads and stop the horse shit. Because from about the Rte. 401 link on I-4 right to the spot where it says ‘No more numbered exits” you know you’re in the shit because of those god damned traffic lights.
Now – where RI-4 ends and dumps in U.S. 1 there are clear signs that the right lane ends. But morons stay in the right lane until the very last moment and then look at you like you’re the one with six eyes because you wouldn’t let them merge. Oh well, should have paid attention there ass wipe.
But my favorite is what I now refer to as a Twatmobile. In essence it’s a mini-van almost invariably driven by women, hence the Twat part. I know, I know, I’m going to get tagged as a misogynist but fuck it.
Back to the story – RI-138 both ways is two lanes. Now I have this strict thing – if you’re in the left lane you’d better be going above the posted speed limit. And here’s a fun video that explains the true danger isn’t speeding, but the change of speed.
So anyhow invariably it’s always a Twatmobile in the left fucking lane doing 30MPH! Ut si. I do the polite and European thing – I flash the high beams. It’s my way of saying “Get the fuck out of the way!”. When they don’t move and there is a break in right lane I’ll be sure to move right, speed up, pass the Twatmobile and cut it off, well in my fantasies. I just hit the gas and go.
I can still recall back in drivers education they taught defensive driving. I believe in offensive driving. :)
So I started the new job on the 9th. My very first day the MBTA commuter rail breaks down and we have to wait to be pushed into Boston. Except the train I was on was supposed to be express Mansfield MA to Back Bay. No such luck. I was supposed to be there at 9AM, got there at 10:15AM. Ut si!
And now today, Friday. I get over to Central Square station in Cambridge and the Red Line train is still there, doors open. So a bunch of us board it. Now the train is pretty packed and there’s no air conditioning running. And then the announcement comes, there’s a medical emergency at Kendall/MIT station.
I theorize that for the length of time it took – it wasn’t someone throwing a cardiac event. This had to be some moron who decided to inconvenience a few thousand people because they figure the best way to go was contact with the third rail. 25 minutes later we pull into Kendall and it’s like nothing happened. They scrape em’ up quick.
But I will say this – public transit is much better, especially tracked public transit then driving. My commute time is approximately the same whether I take the train or drive. Where public transit really shines is in cost – much less expensive than driving. Plus you get to sit, or stand as the case may be on the Red Line towards Alewife. But you can still hit facebook on your phone and it’s only about a ten minute ride from Central Square to South Station.
And then Monday it’s back to the grind. Or starting the grind. New job on Monday! Commuting to Cambridge – doesn’t take long and I’ll get some more walking in as the place is .6 miles from the T stop. Nothing I can’t handle come rain, shine or snow.
Driving there is out of the question. The whole city is permit parking only. So the T is the best option. In fact I’m told two of the executive staff commute in from my city to Cambridge the same way.
Got the call today to setup my info and then they’ll ship my laptop on Monday so it’ll be overnight so Tuesday all up and running.
A few observations from getting fingerprinted today. The size of the machines has been immensely reduced and not really conducive to capturing good scans. Took quite a number of tries to get my prints. And apparently these scanners pickup radiated heat.
I’m more familiar with the standard ten-print machines. Those don’t care whether you’re warm or not.
And I note the app for the scanning seems to be Microsoft Access based. That doesn’t inspire great confidence in me.
All they’re doing is running the prints against NCIC or National Criminal Information Center.The reality is it’s CJIS or Criminal Justice Information Systems that does the real work. I can recall when I worked at the AG’s office we had to do an export of our criminal database and send it to CJIS for inclusion in the Interstate Identification Index or III.
So if any Originating agency scans your prints – they submit through AFIS (Automated Fingerprint Identification System) which then goes out to CJIS and runs the check to see if you have a record. It’s really quite interesting how it works.
Spewing Truth in the face of Lies 