Musings of an Open Source BOFH

So my laptop, my primary workhorse when it comes to my day job, has been acting very wonky lately. I thought it was the wireless card for a while - so I bought a replacement. Didn't really solve the problem though, and further testing seems to look bad. The machine just hard locks, no kernel panic and the caps-lock light has a tendency to blink, which if I can't remember if that's kernel panic (thought Linux did both caps lock and num lock though), or more likely I think I remember reading that the blinking caps lock on an IBM (Lenovo now) T42 is a hardware fault of some sort. Considering that this kernel has been rock solid stable (no it hasn't been updated in a while, yes I'm a bad human being), and considering that this can happen back to back very quickly - this is seemingly hardware related.

Joy.

So in classic fashion I started fretting, the T42 *is* over 3 years old, probably pushing closer to 4. I do use the machine a *lot*, and it's not like it hasn't served me well (it was bought off of what was left of Orion Multisystems when they imploded - the words "cheap" don't begin to describe how much I picked it up for back then). So couple that with the fact I just started working for kernel.org full time, cross that with my increasing want to work from wherever I want to (like going to Ottawa to see Terri in Jan/Feb) and really it boils down to - I need my laptop to work. So dickering with the hardware and trying to get it to limp along a while longer, while admirable (and I will likely do it anyway) isn't going to cut it.

So after mucking about, and fighting (literally) with Lenovo's website (ok honestly Lenovo - your website SUCKS - when I'm getting "Session Timed out" when I've been on your website for a total of 10 minutes, most of which has been constant clicking on your site playing with options and reading help and such and I'm in the middle of putting something together is just not right. Bonus goes to your rep that when I mentioned it to him, he sighed and said "Yeah.... we know about it, we are trying to fix it... sorry..." this should tell you something) I got a quote together, sat on it, stared at it, talked with the bosses about it and then because the holiday deals were so good - I jumped.

So I've got a nice Lenovo T400 on it's way, given what I remember of Lenovo's shipping habbits I'll see it sometime next millenia (Their record stands at average wait for machine from purchase at 1.5 months from purchase date from my own, my brothers and friends experiences). I'll be happy if I see it before I go up to Ottawa in Janurary. It's a pretty nice machine, reasonably decked out though not quite every option checked. Price was still *quite* reasonable too, got something like $571 or something like that off the machine, bought some extra ram and a bigger hard drive 3rd party and saved another $150 over Lenovo's pricing and the final total was still cheaper than what my brother paid for his T61 a couple of years ago.

So yeah, I'm now moving slightly closer to being an all 64-bit, only things left are my T42 (which I think is still going to get used but in a less critical role), my firewall (via epia-m system), and my mythtv frontend box. Of the machines that I currently use those are the only 32-bit machines left. I do still have my old Fujitsu P2040 that's 32-bit (though that's a Crusoe processor too) and a few other odds and ends but yeah.

Looking forward to it, hopefully won't have to wait too long for it.

ADDENDUM: I'm a little shocked, Lenovo claims my T400 shipped today (Dec 3, 2008) and I should have it next week. Either I'm hallucinating or they are on the ball right now. Well more time to play with the new pretty I suppose!

So I've got a smidgen of insomnia, between the book I'm reading ( Terry Pratchet's The Truth, which is a rather interesting take on the rise of journalism and the printing press. The Truth shall set the Free ) and the fact that I think I might have found an rental worth going after ( sadly it's not quite what I want - but this would be a step up in the right direction ) that I'm just a bit wound up, and need something to finally calm me down and get me to sleep. So I'll fill everyone in on the last couple of months.

So August was hectic - as usual. Towards the beginning (not long after my last post) we got word that a friend of mine, Scarybug, of the now famous Scarybug Games, had his game Chronotron accepted into the Penny Arcade Expo (PAX)'s PAX10. This was pretty awesome, to say the least! So having a desire to go and attend PAX last year (which I got ditched for), I thought it would be awesome to go and support Scarybug and generally get to go do something way cool. Terri was roughly planning on coming out around my birthday anyway, so I checked to see if she was interested in joining our little cadre heading north - and she was as excited by the idea as I was (I love that woman so much!). So plans were made, hotels were scrambled for, mini-vans were setup and tickets were purchased.

Terri came out a bit before PAX so we were able to have some time together before PAX all happened. Really, I'm not sure there is ever enough time to spend with Terri, but I'm exceedingly happy to have gotten to spend time with her. PAX was pretty awesome though, both Terri and I got a pile of photos ( Terri's set, My Photos ) and we had a blast! I even got to help out with Scarybug's PAX10 booth - twas fabulous! I really had a blast, and am seriously looking forward to maybe going next year!

Now that it's getting late and I'm winding down finally, a heads up I changed jobs part way through September as well. The long and the short of it is that Kernel.org, as mentioned at OLS this year got funding for a full time person. Well - I applied and got the job - so I'm now employed by the Linux Foundation, working full time on Kernel.org. Really this is a pretty fantastic job change, and I'll have more to say about it when I'm not vaguely coherent and it's not 4:16am ;-)

Off for home, both the Bof (link) and the talk (link) went really well. The talk went over it's time by about 20 minutes because people were discusing stuff so much, and discusion seems to be continuing after the fact - all in all I think that's a succes. Downside on the talk - I kinda said, rather vehemently that someone rather important was wrong. There was a fantastic write-up that I was included on over at linux.com (link).

Only other downside - heading home sucks - it means Leaving Terri, and that only seems to get harder. If I could stop having to leave I think I would be a lot happier :-) but for now, the grind of work calls.

Ok took down the original post as I've got a new full length video - warning it's the whole thing and I've been recommended to watch it at 4x the speed I've got now, and warning the file is 100M or so. Click here to see the movie. I've got a whole slew of photos from the trip up to Crater Lake and all the side trips to Lava Bed National Park, and such. I'll try and fix the full gallery soon and get the photos up. Downside of the digital camera is that I need more storage now! Working on that.

Ok so Molly's wedding was awesome and I was very glad to have made the trek back home for it! Got to see a couple of people from high school that I hadn't seen in a long time. In fact the pastor who presided was a friend of mine from West High and who I hadn't seen for a couple of years - totally crazy! But it was a beautiful ceremony, and the party was good despite having to get moved inside due to some sprinkles that happened outside. Terri and I had dueling cameras going a fair amount of the time, have to take a look at the photos and see who wins [ED: Terri won for all of the inside shots, I couldn't even compete but I kept up without too much issue on the outside shots]. Even their official photgrapher (who tend to be the bane of my existance, always doing their job and stepping right into the photo I've got lined up and generally being in the way) was good, and during some of the dancing took quite a number of photos of Terri and I - have to poke Molly about those and see if they were any good.

Though bonus points to Molly - she mentioned to Terri and I that Wylde Nept was playing that night, and that if she could wrangle it she was going to go change and go listen to them on her wedding night! Go Molly! I ended up convincing Terri, my younger brother and Ben M. to all go out with me. It was highly amusing to be out listening to a traditional Irish Celtic Pub group at a table where no one drank at all. Twas awesome - I've got a really bad movie I took at The Mill in Iowa City where they got Molly and Benjamin to come up and dance. It's horrible but I will hang onto it as blackmail material against Molly (or for anyone who begs me enough for a copy!). Awesome trip so far it's going great and I think Terri is enjoying herself too!

So for those of you who didn't catch what was going on yesterday - this was an April Fools Day joke. It was concieved by HPA and I last year, though there was some reasons we didn't do it last year. This apparently has had a number of people in a bit of a stir! I have heard rumors there's even a FreeBSD board that's still debating the validity of the original message. The main point of contention is based on when I sent the mail out. Specifically the mail was sent a little after midnight UTC as the kernel.org machines themselves are set to UTC and currently span the globe. Hopefully this will help set some of these things to rest!

So Terri and I were talking about random stuff (not that we don't talk quite a bit in general but yeah, and we came up with a new system of dealing with the progression of relationships, as well as the operators that can be applied to them:

There are some additional things that have come to me while writing this up, operations that can be performed on the subject (ok this just proves I'm an utter geek - hopefully someone will smile at this)

To quote a movie I own (Milipitas Monster): "I'm NOT having a good time"

So I'll give a quick update since February before I move on to how I am vehemently mad at American Airlines.

So life has been been insanely busy since Februrary. The months have flown by, and can't even tell you everything thats been going on. I know I've kept meaning to blog and tell you all how I'm angry at this, or the stupid thing I saw (like people backing up on the highways and such) but I've been busy enough that I haven't been able to do it. A lot of huge changes on kernel.org have been keeping me busy - we've deployed 4 new servers, and two of those were to Europe. My dad was able to land a job so things got a lot better on that front, though it wasn't perfectly ideal - but things are working out there so it's all good.

I just got back from Ottawa, which I was up there for the Ottawa Linux Symposium - which was a really good trip. I happened to be up there to give the BOF for kernel.org, which went really really well. a bit more than 70 people ended up showing up to the BOF, which far exceeded the 5 I was expecting - and to top it off people seemed to find it very useful. At some point there will be video footage of me making a complete idiot of myself in front of people, and now in front of the whole intarwebs ;-)

Ended up staying up there for Canada Day which was one of the most amazing street parties and national holidays I've seen. It was something else, and it isn't something you would find in Washington, DC. I mean, the national museums were free for normal exhibits (in fact I wandered over to the national gallery and saw the Renoire landscapes - which was an awesome exhibit). And had an interesting run in over at the Dominion tavern. If you've seen Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter you'll recognize the Dominion as the tavern where the giant fight with the vampires occured. Well I happened to go in and I ordered a coke, there were a couple of people at the bar and I asked the bar tender 'Have you ever heard of a movie called Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter? The people at the bar started laughing nigh uncontrolably and the bar tender calmly said 'Jesus is out back'.

This is the point where most people would double take and go *WHHHHHHAAAAA?*. Thats exactly what I did. So in true fashion I went out back, and yes I found Jesus. (I've even got photos of him)

Finished my coke and headed out and called HPA to let him know of this fantastic news, and he came straight over and we went back in. Turns out that 'Jesus' must own the Dominion as he was behind the bar serving when we went back in, so we wandered up to him and ordered two cokes and I calmly asked 'Are you Jesus?'

J: I was once

And I shook his hand and thanked him for such an awesome movie. And I can now say 'I found Jesus, he was out back and he served me a coke'.

So yeah Canada day was fun and I would love to be around up in Canada at some point again for it! But sadly this brings me to the part of the entry where I'm going to turn quite bitter, angry and I'm going to say a lot of things that will probably not endear me to American Airlines.

American Airlines or how they tried to kill me

Let me preface what I'm about to say with a few statements. I have in the past been a VERY happy American Airline customer, I'm a frequent flyer member with them and I have a reasonable amount of miles with them (enough for a couple of free flights I think), and of all my airline stories American Airlines has never made 'the cut' so to speak. I mean I was FLOORED and impressed back in Novemeber when I flew home and there was a measely delay (not anything to even worry about in my book) and I couple of weeks later I got an e-mail profusely apologizing for the delay and showering me with free frequent flyer miles (I never even complained, a delay of less than a day is peanuts when you compare it to sleeping in airports when trying to get to interviews, or being told your flight hasn't come to this airport in 6 months, etc). So when I say I'm VERY disapointed I want you to understand why I'm dissapointed.

American Airlines unwittingly caused me quite a bit of suffering, grief and anger because of a 4.5 hour flight from Chicago O'Hare to San Francisco Intl. I would go so far as to claim they unwittingly tried to kill me.

A bit more back story, to make my point very very clear. I have a nut allergy. Specifically I have a tree nut allergy, not to be confused with a peanut allergy as peanuts are legumes. Peanut allergies and tree nut allergies are actually very similar, and in a lot of cases having one means you have the other. I scaped the serpents tongue on the peanuts though but for the purposes of my rant the same arguments and concerns come up for people with peanut allergies as well as tree nut alergies. I digress with the peanut allergy explination however.

I have a nut allergy. One could even go so far as to call it a severe nut allergy. To give you an idea of how severe I've had an epipen since I was probably 5, I will likely need a constant perscription for an epipen for the rest of my life. Luckily I have had only one occasion where an epipen might have been useful, and that was before my family knew what an epipen was. All of my friends have a good idea of how serious this allergy is, and I don't hide it from them. In general this is something that's actually quite easy for me to avoid and manage (which is a bit different than people with peanut allergies - I do feel for you guys out there with those) Nuts are most commonly found in desserts, so I tend to be overly cautious about eating them, along with medeteranian food, and a few things along those lines. And MOST nuts I'm not so allergic to them that accientally eating a small amount is going to send me anaphylactic, it'll just make my mouth tingle. So while it is normally manageable there is a specific situation that is unavoidable and can cause massive havoc.

Peanuts and nuts have a tendency to leave small amounts of dust (or in the case of bagged varieties quite a bit) that is easily kicked up into the air. Now in a normal environment this isn't that big of a deal, they will float around for a bit and settle like normal dust. In a normal sized house (lets say my apartment with about 1K sqft of space) a small handful of nuts from one person means there's a very small particle count in the air, and it's unlikely to affect anyone but the by far most severely aflicted. However, lets change the environment here. Lets take that one person with a small bag and double the total sqft to 2K, but instead of something like a house you make it a presurized cabin that's recirculating air, a lot of recirculated air. In this environment your going to basically keep most of those particles in the air both as people move a lot and as the forced air is recirculated. This makes for the concentration of nut dust particles in the air to be a lot higher with very little effort.

Which brings me to my main complaint. American Airlines (along with a lot of other airlines apparently - they aren't on their own but my rancor is currently targeted at American right now) have reversed a long standing choice to not serve nuts on aircraft (along with peanuts - though peanuts seem to still be mising). In fact they have gone so far in the reverse it's mind boggling. Apparently first class passengers (on flights who's 'snack time' is after noon) are being given a mixed nut assortment which consists of cashews, almonds and walnuts I believe. And in coach the 'cheap' option for a snack (at $3) is a trail mix assortment with cashews.

Needless to say when I found this out after 3 hours of being in the air and experiencing some odd itching, a bit more caughing than I would have expected and a nose that made the niagra falls seem like a babling brook a light went off in my head and I dove for the benedryl in my backpack immediately, and called for a stewardess.

I was in the process of a good sized (though at the point non-life threatening) allergic reaction to the nut dust that was being forced to breath, and could not escape from because the other passengers were being given / sold nuts on the aircraft.

What followed is as close to a timeline as I can give, but due to me being absolutely internally livid and being very concerned with my own internal state (being very aware of what was going on and trying to make sure that if things got worse that my epipen was easily available and that my traveling companions were aware of what was going on)

~3hrs into the flight (at least 2 hours after the nuts were first served) I make the realization that the insanely runny nose (as well as the other symptoms) I've had for that last 2 hours or so is not because of the normal random traveling bits but because I'm in the middle of an allergic reaction to the nut dust in the air. There's nowhere to go to get away from it all, and to be honest the worst of the damage is done - the particles are already logged in my lungs, even putting my on oxygen at this point won't really fix the problem as the bits are there in my lungs and my body is already inflamed. I dive for my backpack under the seat in front of my and pull out the benedryl down two tablets, pull out my penguin mints (caffinated mints) start chewing them like there's no tomorrow and call for a stewardess. I inform my traveling companions of my sudden epiphany. I'm now actutely checking myself and paying attention to my breathing and such - if things get bad my epipen is in my backpack and the only thing I could do is down a non-recommended amount of benedryl, take the epipen and chew through what's left of my 'caffiene pills' in the hopes of them getting the plane down in time for them to get me an EMT. We are at cruising altitude for an S80 - 30,000 - 40,000 ft. An emergency landing might not be fast enough for me if it gets that far.

A stewardess comes over and I ask two very blunt very simple questions:

1. I need a glass of water immediately


2. What are the EXACT contents of the trail mix as I have reason to believe I'm having an allergic reaction to the nut dust from it. (that's all the nuts I know about at that time and I need to know if the REALLY bad nuts were included. If so this is going to get a lot worse, if not it won't get really bad for a while yet but I'm not in a good situation)

The head stewardess for coach (seemingly) came over a couple of minutes later and asked a few questions and tried to figure out what as going on exactly. I explained that I had reason to believe I was having an allergy attack due to the nut dust being forcibly recirculated through the cabin from the trail mix containing cashews. She quickly pointed out that 'Policy does not allow us to not sell the snacks' (fine, great the damage is already done and at that minute I didn't care but for the record that's a darned bad policy) and two 'That first class had a mixed nut assortment'.

I quickly interogate her with regards to the contents of the mixed nut assortment and make sure that the danger nut is not present. I'm now even more concerned as first class was just given the assortment, this explains a lot more about why I'm having the troubles I am. She mentions understanding allergies, as her daughter (may she rest in peace as she died of a medical condition) was at times on some of the very heavy duty anti-histimens and epipens and such were not uncommon to her because of this. She understands my concerns but ultimately (and I agree with her) there isn't anything she can do to stop the cause (it's already in the air - the only thing they could do is recirculate out all the air and pump in fresh air). She also mentions the morning / afternoon thing (even going so far as to suggest that I only fly in the morning! I've always had connecting flights when I fly and invariably I get leg 1 done in the morning and leg 2 done in the afternoon / evening) and asks me to make sure that if there's anything I need to let them know.

I am then stuck on the aircraft for another 1.5 hrs until we get to San Francisco Intl.. My brain is fried, my nose is a mess (the second stewardess had given me some tissues, and wow did those tear my nose apart), the caughing and breathing issues are now a bit more noticable. I get off the plane get to my luggage and at that time I'm rather sick and in no capacity able to fight / argue with American over the predicament. I did however make sure to ask the stewardess for the 'correct' path to complain through, as this wasn't going to end there.

I get home, still taking benedryl, take a very long hot shower (which helped a lot but obviously not enough) and tried to sleep. I didn't very well, between caughing and my nose I slept in 45 minute chunks and that was only about 6 hours at best.

I filed my first complaint, requesting a responce from American on Tuesday morning. I have kept copies of the form that was sent. I have not had a responce from American thought they claim it can 'take a week to respond to your request'.

Wednesday was the first day where I started really feeling 'human' and not fuzzy brained. I was able to sleep Tuesday night, I was still on benedryl and I was using my inhaler.

Today is July 6th, I flew on Monday. I'm still caughing (though thats getting better), and my nose is still not 'normal' (being unnaturally stuffy / runny). I don't consider being forced to breath a toxic substance in an enclosed space for 4.5hours, and then suffering for a week afterwards to be an acceptable way to fly. It absolutely shocks me that American, as well as many other airlines, would serve nuts on the aircraft. They already know how allergic people are to these and it's not like they bill their flights as 'contains nuts', and by the time someone who's allergic to them finds out it's too late to get off. I'm genuinely scared that for the airlines to take this seriously someone is going to have to jab an epipen in their leg and land an aircraft, and I pray that that someone won't be me. For now I will wait to hear what American has to say, I am trying not to harbor explicit ill will towards them and I want to continue thinking that this is a problem of the left hand not talking to the right hand about the issue. If AA responds and takes my issue seriously I'll be happy, if not I will contact a number of advocacy and complaint departments (including the FAA) about the issue and the problem the issue presents. I would just rather AA not try to ignore this but take it seriously, and I understand one of the issues the stewardess brought up: they can't stop people from bringing nuts onto the aircraft and consuming them. While I understand that, and I accept it - the airlines shouldn't encourage nuts being on an aircraft by giving them out or selling them. If someone brings nuts onto an aircraft on their own thats one thing, but if the airlines gives them out that's quite another.

Ok I've ranted enough on that, and I know right now I'm hurt (both from AA making me sick for several days and for them taking up serving nuts again after not doing so for such a long time) and I'm angry (same reasons really) and I'm giving AA a chance to make things right, I just hope they take it seriously :-/

The life and times of a Warthog

So the last month and a half has been..... Interesting and it's been busy. First a quick update on the situation back home. Things have calmed down some, though the entire family is still on edge. No one is sure if dad's going to survive this ordeal he's being put though. There is a small reprieve so to speak and he has gotten an extension so things are now delayed until the end of February. Which currently begs the question since I'm penny pinching as much as possible, do I spend the money and go back to Iowa for a short while for Ayyam-i-ha, or do I sit and have a gothic holiday (sitting in my apartment and celebrating alone)? I don't have an answer but I'll certinaly keep my eyes peeled on plane tickets. If you find some cheap ones or know of somewhere to find them cheap, let me know.

So beyond that lets see what else is going on. Thanksgiving was a bit hectic, getting people to / from the airport and such. I ended up going home for Turkey day as I had already had tickets. It was good, and it helped the family a lot to see me, heck it helped me a lot. It was a good Thanksgiving, though everyone was on edge and stressed. It was good to be home, and just be with everyone.

December was fairly quiet, work was busy, hectic and insane. I got some decent testing done for a demo we were working on with a 3rd party, though I'm not entirely sure how that finally turned out. So the big news of December was I went into talks with 3Leaf Networks, and found out they were pretty cool and my 'Christmas Presant' to myself this year was accepting a job offer from them. C2 wasn't exactly thrilled but they took the news fairly well.

Christmas eve I ended up doing a big dinner party and made deliciously yummy food. Well, it wasn't my best dinner I've cooked but it was reasonable, and I've got some notes on what I can do to improve it if I cook it again (Pork tenderloin over potatoe beds, string green beans, salad, etc). Everyone seemed to enjoy the evening in general, did dinner and than we were going to watch a movie of some sort but got side tracked and played with my MythTV setup for a while and just chatting. People really seemed to like the setup, so I might just try and do a dinner & a movie thing maybe once a week or once every other week or something, kinda depends on how gung ho I get about it all. But it was fun and I definately want to do it again.

Christmas Day however was eventful. I awoke, and was an utter bum for most of the day. At some point I decided to start text messaging everyone a Merry Christmas. About 3/4 of the way through this process Rob M. gives me a call and calmly says 'Hey, I was about to call you anyway as I was going to ask if you could give me a ride - I think I may have broken my foot'......... Well as you can imagine, I dropped everything I was being a bum and doing and went and got him to the emergency room. So I spent several hours hanging out at the hospital. It turned out to not be broken (WELL they don't think so anyway.... but thats an odd story), and I got Rob home and went to pick people up from the airport (I did a lot of that in December, something like 5 trips to SFO and a strip to SJC in the span of a couple of weeks). The only downside to spending the time at the Hospital, which makes for a good story and was well worth it, was I caught a cold that I only got over a couple of days ago, so par for the course I suppose.

Anyway New years eve was pretty quiet this year, nothing really to report on that front. It was spent more or less about the same as last year, though instead of being subjected^H^H^H enthralled by Happy Tree Friends, we played 'House on the Hill' an Avalon Hill board game. If you haven't played it, it's a lot of fun and because of the way it's done it's new and fresh almost every time you play it. Go check it out!

Anyway this week has been my first week at 3Leaf, which you can imagine is filled with brain dumps, and just trying to figure out whats going on and getting settled in. I've already got a quote back on my desk for a new build server that I get to rig out as part of my duties (it's monsterous, trust me so you can imagine how much glee it brings me). The funny thing is not two days after I'm out of my last job, they had to call me up to have me come in and fix a few things that had broken, and in them trying to solve the problem ended up making the problem worse. Go figure, I'm gone two days and they end up having problems. Cest la vie! Things are fine now, and should go back to the smooth sailing I would have expected (the problem was a partial hardware hiccup, and not something I'd expect to happen again)

And here I am up to date, in a whirlwind update. My goal is to update this a bit more often and to vent more random frustrations and comments with the world in general. Not that I think anyone actually reads this, but hey it's like shouting through the void, maybe someone will hear you, and if not at least I feel better for having shouted ;-)

Happy New Year everyone, so far this year is looking up and I have high hopes for it!

Central void of yuppiness or Why some companies are dumb or please lord let me never be THAT pretentious

So today I decided to add a 3rd shelf to the growing number of shelves bolted to my living room wall. A couple months back I bought some shelves from Ikea and had to stain them to get them to match the bookcases that are in my living room. This is anothe one of those, it's a bit darker than the other two but since it's further up you can't really tell. So I ended up putting a rather large book full of shakespeare and the dragon poster I bought at Gencon on it. Honestly it looks pretty good and I am now inspired to actually get things framed and up on my wall! I also decided that since I've been on something of a cleaning and organizing kick that I should go and buy the bookshelf for this one nook I have. It didn't go well.

So, what I want is some sort of modularish shelving thats about 6ft tall by roughly 36-40in wide and about 12 - 14in deep. I originally thought something like Ikea's Gorm collection would work. But sadly it's made of pine, and honestly, not the best quality pine at that. So even if I stain it, which will be a giant mess and nigh impossible as I don't really have the space, It's flimsy and well.. yeah. Not going to work. So I've been pondering what can go there, ohhh it has one more requirement: the electrical breakers for my apartment would be at the back of this, so it needs an open back. So since I've been putting up all this wire shelving at home, and since The Container Store is just up the road in Santana Row, I thought I'd give them a shot. They actually cary some of the really GOOD wire shelving, and since I'm going to be using this rather seriously I would like to make sure it's of some quality. So I give them a call and ask 'do you have the silver/chrome metro shelves in the 14x36in size in stock?' they wander off, come back and tell me that indeed they did. So I decide to trek over there. This too did not go well.

So I get over to Santan Row, and for those of you not in the San Jose area, let me explain Santan Row: It's pure yuppie central. I've sat at a cafe thats on the main drag there, doing my best to spend as little as possible, just to watch the cars drive up and down the main drag. Why? In 10 minutes I saw 3 ferrari's, 2 lamburghini's, a lotus and several other cars that are probably worth more than the total sum of all my assetts. The funny part was, they were all looking for parking spots on the main drag so they can show of their cars, instead of parking in the parking garage like 'normal' people. Anyway, so I get to Santana Row, and I get into the parking garage where people immediately turn dumb. I mean it's unfathomable how people will be fighting for parking spots on levels 1 or 2 of a parking garage where by the time I get to the top level (4th in this case) there are more parking spaces than I can shake a stick at. Lazy human beings! (DARN YOU KAISER PERMANENTE AND YOUR THRIVE CAMPAIGN CONVINCING ME TO PARK FURTHER AWAY SO I WALK MORE!) Anyway, so I park and wander into The Container Store.

The store is fairly quiet, so I head up and run into another gentleman looking at the metro shelving. So this other gentleman gets some assistance and starts pondering some of this shelving for his work (he apparently works at cisco). So yeah, this didn't turn out well. An incredibly nice associate, named Christina, came over to ask the guy who was helping the Cisco employee a question. This is where things start going wrong. He basically starts trying to put some moves on the poor girl and the associate helping him kinda plays along with the whole thing and teases her as well. They end up delaying her while she's trying to help someone else and yeah. So she ends up escaping and I make mention that what the Cisco guy is after is this certain size of the metro shelving he's after, since I'm using the stuff exactly as he wants to use it, at work. Well so now I'm designated a buddy of this guy for just trying to help out, joy. Anyway the Cisco gentleman and the associate go back to talking at some point, half including me though I'm not doing much to stay included, and their conversation quickly devolves to talking about Christina. I wouldn't normally care but when the associate starts commenting about how horny she is to a customer, and they go so far as to call her over to ask her her age - there is something WRONG! Even when she had finally escaped again and some lady who was reasonably attractive walked by at the other end of the isle he gawked and nearly cat called, turned to me and said 'hey I'm single what can I do?'. I genuinely felt sorry for Christina, she seemed lovely from the information that was dragged out of her by those two, and she didn't really seem to appreciate their advances. I did try to divert her from those two, but they didn't make it easy which probably makes me as guilty as they are :-(. And after ALL of that, and getting down there 'ohhh yeah our company doesn't even carry the size of shelf your looking for, we don't have anything for you - can't even special order it.' Joy.

So I'm annoyed and I leave The Container Store empty handed, head over to Crate and Barrel to pick up a replacement plate since I chipped one of mine and so the trip wasn't a total waste. Get my plate and leave. Parking garage is again a pain, and when I get out I get dumped onto the main drag. As I was looking out my car trying to get back to a normal street is boggled my mind at how yuppie they all were. It was just dripping with it. I ended up punch some deep base techno / grunge up on my car's stereo, turned up the volume and had to drive all the way down and all the way back to get to where I wanted to go.

Only thing I could do to try and bring reality to yuppievill.