i don't even like pearl jam. i had to go to allmusic and everything. vitalogy sucked though.

man, so you fix elscorcho then don't post? nothing about super bowl?
or the hack?

alright. fine. let's talk about getting hacked.

apparently the stats program i was using had a huge exploit in it. i say 'using', but really i just had it installed and had not played with it enough to actually have it generate regular reports. so basically i had some software on my computer that i never used and it had a huge security hole in it. nice. so some guys from portugal had a computer setup that basically scanned the internet for computers with this software installed. they found mine, gained root on my computer (that's the all-important super user) and did all sorts of naughty things. replaced all my index html files with their portugese drivel. killed all my user accounts. other naughty things i'm sure. anyways, i was able to recover my databases and some of the files, and the rest came from 2 month old backups. note to self - back up shit more often. my next major task is to set up backup scripts that run every weekend. that'll be a lot nicer.

i registered another domain! woo. this one was more for geoff. and unfortunately, i bought it before the large-breasted chick during the super bowl made all of godaddy's prices drop considerably. you know what i'm talkin about. anyways, it's filler now, but once it gets content, then i'll pass it along.

the super bowl was alright. first half was awful by both teams until the eagles had that nice drive and the pats had that nice response. real sloppy before then. pats were sweet in the third quarter. eagles made it a game late. yawn.

so if a team has the ball with 7:20 left and a 10 point lead - if they are the greatest team ever, you'd think they'd be able to finish the game right there, or at least get a couple of first downs and kill a substantial amount of clock. but no, the patriots needed the eagles to have no sense of urgency in order in addition to their mostly impressive defense and adequate offense to win their 3rd super bowl in 4 years. there's no doubt that the patriots record and performance in big games over the past 4 years has established them as a 'dynasty' - 3 championships in 4 years! but these are the two most compelling reasons why they shouldn't be even considered with the cowboys/49ers/steelers in terms of the best teams ever (and i guess the packers, but who cares about the 1960s packers?).

1) michael irvin, who of course was on those great cowboys teams that most of us grew up dealing with, pointed out that those cowboys teams dominated in their super bowls, they simply dominated on the big stage. furthermore, they were consistently good for 6-7 years straight, not just the 4 years (SO FAR) for the patriots. 2 more years of dominant patriots football and i'm jumping on the 'best team ever' bandwagon. but not yet. finally, irvin argued that competition was stronger in the mid-90s. the logic that i see behind this difficult to prove statement: if it was easier to keep the cowboys together, it was probably easier to keep the other really good teams of the era together. this includes the bills teams that couldn't NOT go to a super bowl (that team was so friggin stacked), a very good giants team, a very good 49ers team, a decent oilers team (so much fun in tecmo super bowl!)... the list goes on. there were other marquee teams. sure, some fluctuated, but there were other very good teams. not just the 'led by a rookie qb who can't throw downfield' steelers and the peyton manning face. and the pats squeaked by the weakest team they had to play in the playoffs! in the biggest game! they can't just step up once and dominate a much worse team not named the cleveland browns?

2) skip bayless argued something i already mentioned. i realized this once i was well into my first thing, so i don't wanna go back and edit it. but he basically said that the pats should have put the eagles away when they could have. which was pretty much 3-4 times in the 4th quarter. and they didn't. that punt was amazing though. they did eat up clock and give the eagles almost no way to win that game. but it was kind of lawyer-ballish. not the dominating football i want from a team i'm going to consider one of the best ever.

obviously you all know i'm not a huge fan of the patriots. and if you didn't know that, now you do. so of course, take it all with a grain of salt.

i seem to be tapped. i've been working since saturday. oh, right, i have a work story. or a story from work. work on saturday. gah.

so this was the first weekend i've ever worked. good times. i came in a little before 8, with plans to do about nothing until 5. i mean, so little happens on the weekends, it ends up being really quiet. or at least, this is what i've heard. and it was pretty true until around 11.

at 11am and 11:30am every saturday the maintenance people cycle the power in the building. why? beats me.

the power goes off for half a second and comes back on. i wait a minute and then go through the datacenter and make sure everything is running ok. i check the air conditioners and all to make sure everything is fine. it is. then i get the email.

it's 86 degrees in the datacenter downstairs. it's never supposed to get over 74 degrees down there. fuck.

after calling the air conditioner tech guys and telling them to get their asses out there, i went downstairs to look around. by then it was close to 90 degrees. the acs were both shut off. great. i get a call from my boss asking me whats up. i tell him, and he tells me 'go up on the roof. do you know how to do that?' i didn't. he tells me over the phone. i get up through the attic fast enough, and i see the door that says 'roof access' on it. it's a nice large rusting door. and it is fucking stuck. it ain't giving me access to anything other than a sore hand. fucker. so i call the security guy to let me up on the roof, in case i'm just not seeing a lock or something.

and to help me open the door if it just stuck. my boss calls me a wuss and tells me to call him back when i get on the roof.

the icy fucking roof. great.

so i call security. and call them again. and after 30 minutes and two security guards someone finally comes up to let me on the roof. the temp in the 4th floor data center is now a cool 98 degrees and i have both the front and back doors to this room full of equipment wide open.

the guy who comes up to help me open up this stuck door - yeah he's about 75 and has no teeth. and he feels like shooting the shit. i'm like "our ac isn't working" and he didn't seem to realize that wasn't a personal comfort issue but a "computers will break" issue. so he was taking his sweet time. we finally get up to the roof access door. he gives it a tug. "it's stuck", he announces.

thanks buddy. we take turns pulling at the door with all our might. finally the door swings open. it's unstuck. miracle. i see the snow-covered roof and i give sean a call.

after stumbling around and power-cycling a couple of air conditioners with no luck, i go back downstairs to the 4th floor at sean's request. he points me towards the thermometer, which i completely missed when i was down here the first 3 times. it's over a 100 degrees in this room now by the way. yeah. so i see that someone has turned off the backup ac unit. so i turn it on and within seconds you can feel the difference. damn those things are powerful. the temp dropped to 85 within 2 minutes and was close to 72 soon after that. woo.

apparently the primary one had a bad motor.

so that was my adventure on the first weekend i worked in my life.