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Posted by admin in Uncategorized on December 20, 2009
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Displaying my inner geek.
A few months ago we decided to have some fun with our intern Scooter.
He’d been mocking us with a “Max Headroom” wallpaper. He’s too young to remember “Max Headroom: Twenty Minutes Into The Future”. And by “too young”, I mean “he wasn’t born yet.” He just didn’t realize how good that show was, at least to a teenaged geek.
So I decided to teach him a gentle lesson by changing his wallpaper. While I could have done something like copying all the files on his computer to his desktop, I wanted to be nice. Nice is just changing his wallpaper so that he isn’t looking at Max Headroom anymore.
A few simple changes to the WindowsXP graphic (to make it WinpwndXP) and a simple registry edit and we were all ready to go. Scooter came into work and fired up his PC. We watched anxiously, and….
Max Headroom showed up.
Puzzled, I dug into the registry. Everything looked fine. I changed it on mine, and the wallpaper changed, but it wasn’t working on his! Puzzled, my coworker and I decided to just berate Scooter instead. He has no relevant work experience and badly needed a haircut. That was enough to entertain us. The wallpaper change prank was forgotten.
Until today.
Another coworker mentioned someone with the same name as Scooter had issues with a wallpaper he couldn’t change. One that says “Winpwnd”, coincidentally enough. He thought another computer geek was pranking him, and was waiting for months for the other geek to say something.
At least now I know it worked. And that Max Headroom still rules.
Fingernails
Our dog Hoot has needed an e-collar (those lampshade things) for a while now. Like me, he has a problem with gnawing on his fingernails. Or claws. You know what I mean. We take it off, and he goes back to the chewing. The vet isn’t sure what’s going on, but none of the drugs are as effective as not letting him get to his feet.
Hoot also has a fascination with eating dirt, or at least smearing it all over his lampshade. Then he comes inside and bumps into stuff, leaving black marks on walls, furniture, and the fiancee. This drives her insane, because she feels I’m not checking the ridge of the e-collar for mud. I wipe the collar off with a paper towel, but the dog is very tricky and (probably) hides mud under his toungue until he gets past me. Then he spits it onto the collar and smears it everywhere.
It isn’t out of the question that Hoot would be this clever. Our other dogs are actually able to hold grass and mud in between their toes and sneak it into the house. I’ve seen it happen, even after I carefully clean their paws.
However much I try to convince Mags of this, she just says I’m being inattentive to details. That isn’t true though. I seldom forget a dog when I let them go outside to pee. Maybe it helps that they bark at the neighbors, but I still get them back inside. I tell her that should count for something. She disagrees. She thinks that if you sometimes forget that a dog is afraid of thunder and you leave him outside during a storm, somehow this proves that you will forget to make sure a child is wearing shoes before you send them to school.
Since I’ve only ever watched nieces and nephews, I think it’s way too early to be assuming that level of dereliction from me. Give me a chance to prove my neglect!
I promise I won’t disappoint.