Simple Nomad's Blog
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31Mar2006 - Mistaken Identities
If anyone ever wanted to know what I look like, and hasn't figured out I'm apparently metrosexual enough to post a picture of myself on my home page, they can always form a mental image based upon who I get mistaken for in public.
Living in Arlington, TX (which surrounds Dalworthington Gardens) places me deep in Pantera country, and practically neighbors with Dimebag Darrel when he was alive. Dime lived in Dalworthington Gardens and was seen a lot running around Arlington. I was mistaken twice for Dimebag -- once while a passenger in my wife's Miata, and once while in the bathroom at The Olive Garden. A guy walked up behind me while I was at the urinal and said "dude I want to shake your hand!" only to discover I was not Dimebag. Talk about creepy.
At a gas station once, a teenager came up and asked if I was Rob Zombie. I had to tell him no, although it occurred to me that if he would have been a hot chick I might have given a different answer.
Due to the way I dress (usually all black) I also get confused with extras in various theatrical or film productions. Granted I have been an extra in exactly one zombie film, but I've been mistaken for an extra in the Treasure Island pirate show in Vegas, as well as an extra in the Matrix (no idea who exactly I was supposed to be, nor which film).
But the weirdest one of all was yesterday at lunch at Bennigan's. Some guy sitting in the bar started yelling "Tommy, it's Tommy!". I glanced up and he was looking at me and nudging his friends, saying "it's him". After he saw me looking at him, he said, "hey you're Tommy Chong, right?". I told him no, since I am in fact not Tommy Chong. And it kind of bummed me out, being that I've been mistaken for some older guy.
So I was bitching to my fellow NMRC members about it online, and Hellnbak tells me someone insisted he was Russ the Intern from the Tonight Show. Now if you knew who Hellnbak was, you would find this funny as shit, as he prides himself on being a rowdy drunk hetreosexual male mother fucker of an asshole. Being such an individual, he NEVER watches the Tonight Show, so I took great glee providing links in channel for Hellnbak:
<@s-nomad> so kim and I went up to bennigans for lunch today, and a guy
in the bar asked if I was tommy chong
<@s-nomad> unsure if that is a compliment or not
<@hellnbak> heh well thats better than what I got once in an airport:
"hey are you that fat dude from the Jay Leno show?"
<@hellnbak> when I said I didnt know what he was talking about he
followed me around saying "its ok man, I won't blow your cover but can
I have your autograph"
<@s-nomad> dude do you know who that is?
<@hellnbak> no idea
<@hellnbak> I always assumed the fat guy on jay leno was jay leno
<@hellnbak> but I dont watch the show
<@s-nomad> hahaha
<@s-nomad> oh man
<@s-nomad> he's this over the top gay guy
<@hellnbak> oh nice
<@hellnbak> got a link?
<@s-nomad> does various street interviews
<@hellnbak> cool I guess...
<@s-nomad> looking... hold on...
<@s-nomad> http://www.rossmathews.net/blog/?page_id=31
<@s-nomad> wait, let me find a clip
<@s-nomad>
http://www.nbc.com/nbc/The_Tonight_Show_with_Jay_Leno/correspondents/correspondents_page2.shtml
<@s-nomad> check out anything with ross the intern
<@s-nomad> omigod that is so funny
<@hellnbak> I so do not look like him
<@s-nomad> dude, watch a clip
<@hellnbak> hmm still nothing like him.. I mean I do not enjoy cock
<@s-nomad> hahaha are you sure?
<@s-nomad> I mean, you're in an airport
<@s-nomad> BEING YOURSELF
<@s-nomad> and someone thinks your THAT guy
<@s-nomad> ok I've decided that the tommy chong thing *was* a
compliment, since tommy doesn't suck cock
<@hellnbak> haha
20Mar2006 - Long Weekend
A very long weekend indeed. Instead of the usual stuff, it was filled with activity. On Friday night it was off to our local Bennigan's to celebrate St. Patrick's Day. Now before you decide that celebrating a holiday at a chain restaurant is lame, I will set the scene. At 8pm the place became a club, with two DJs, shot girls, a lot of waitresses literally wearing nothing but lingere, several bar stations in addition to the main bar, and no one under 21 allowed in the place. Kim and I worked the door checking IDs, which may sound boring but we also get to drink and we get to see everyone coming in and leaving, including the drunks getting thrown out, the police getting involved, and all the associated drama. Lots of fun. And we stopped "working" at 1am and joined the party. I got very drunk, much more than Kim (especially since she can hold her liquor much better than me) and was still drunk when I woke up the next day.
The one very interesting thing that happened while there (outside of seeing women kissing each other and a fair share of nipples) was that while we were working the door, lightning struck a light pole outside the restaurant about 10 feet from the front door while we were just inside. Amazingly loud and intense. Somebody's God was probably pissed off over some slight of mine.
Home and asleep by 3:30am, back up at 9am to get ready for the wedding shower Kim was hosting. Even though it was a women-only event, myself and Torin were quite busy. I had to pick up the rental folding chairs at 10am, plus several runs to go get various items from the store. After dinner I was beat and headed to bed early.
On Sunday, the Christians decided their God should attack me more. There was a loud lightning strike during the night, which apparently hit my car, breaking a window out. I am pretty sure it was lightning and not a robbery attempt as multiple CDs were in plain sight. The black spot on the window was also a decent sign. Later that day we were going to see V for Vendetta (decent movie BTW) and raging floodwaters were sent to kill us. Exiting one of the flood areas by going the wrong way on the entrance ramp on an active and busy freeway is always a lot of fun.
Obviously this took a lot out of me. To relax I brutally killed terrorists in the XBox version of "Black", which is a very kick-ass first person shooter. Nothing like playing God with others' lives after God tries to kill you.
04Mar2006 - The Server Room Takes Shape
Okay so the server room is coming along. Much quicker than I anticipated. First off, outside events intervened. Last Monday the 27th MadHat and I's boss flew out to Dallas and MadHat was laid off. This was completely out of the blue, probably more for me than him. He seemed to sense it. Now don't feel sorry for MadHat -- by the end of the week he had a consulting business going with an investor and 2 gigs lined up, plus more on the way. But it still was a shock and I still am unsure what to think about it. Work had a rough quarter and the management team decided to trim things up so we weren't burning through the last funding round so fast. I've been moved into Engineering and I'll be doing more and more research as time moves on. I'm happy about the move as long as things get better, which I think they will be. Outside of the regular tasks I do, I'll need to pick out a new title for my new role as more of an internal consultant than an analyst. So with that in mind, I drove over to the Dallas office Friday and picked up all of the Threat Labs equipment, since the Dallas office is now closing (it was only MadHat and myself anyway).
With the sudden influx of equipment, I had more than enough stuff to get the server room going, so I went out and bought a roll-around rack and a few other goodies such as a new router and a bit of cabling. The tile can wait as I can simply wheel the entire labs out of there when the time comes and let the tile guys do their thing. I've done the preliminary work and expect the actual cable runs to be done tomorrow.
For the research ideas I have I really need to get the server room into shape, and for my work stuff to go smoothly I need several of these machines up and running by early next week. So I put a bit of pressure on myself and I'll be configuring like a madman for the next few days.
Several of the NMRC systems are going to have to be wiped and reloaded, mainly because it has been a while since I have done that. So there will be a lot of OS downloading over the next few days to get things into shape and in a better "locked down" state. The hosts are fairly tight, but they can be tighter, and I'd really like to get back into more monitoring of the network. Right now I basically ignore such things as port scans and basic lame attacks against the systems -- I mean who the fuck launches Windows attacks against Unix systems anyway? But I'd like to monitor a bit more, play around with better methods of logging, etc. Should be fun. I just hate the fact that a good friend and co-worker losing his job was the kick in the ass to make this happen faster.