Q: Hi Brian, I don’t remember the username.

A: “Username” for what?

Clearly there is an expectation of telepathy, which I have not quite mastered as of yet.   To further cement my issue, allow me another example:

Q: I don’t remember what directory we put that stuff in, do you?

A: What stuff?

My point is, that if you’re initiating a conversation with a question, and you’d really like an answer to that question, try to ensure there is no questioning its completeness.   Here is a wrong/right example:

Q – WRONG: Where did you download that thing from?

Q – RIGHT: The program you used to connect to server2 via the keyboard yesterday… where did you download it from?

As a general rule of thumb, if your question contains any of the following words:

• thing
• stuff
• place

It probably needs some adjustment.

Try to remember the person attempting to answer your question may be juggling dozens of different things, probably has hundreds of numbers, passwords, and other data to remember, and would greatly appreciate the reduced mental workload a few extra words provides.

Your favorite support person will thank you!

Using Solaris’ Dtrace functionality a systems engineer determines that noise is responsible for his intermittent disk latency problems.   Just wait for the last part of the video, it’s worth it.

http://blogs.sun.com/brendan/entry/unusual_disk_latency

Thanks to Greg for pointing that one out to me.

Behold, the lego-robot that solves the Rubik’s Cube.

In fact, that blue light on the Dell is being illuminated simply by the eminating kick-ass-ness of the disk array. This geekout moment was brought to you compliments of The Linux Fix.

The Persimmons/Ice Cream Lady is pretty nice, a bit quirky, and she loves persimmons. We’re ‘lucky’ enough to have a nice and healthy persimmons tree in our back yard, and in the fall she comes by and takes all the ripe ones she can put into boxes to make various foodstuff out of. Last year it worked out to about one hundres persimmons, which I’d otherwise have to pick up–rotting–on the lawn in the spring.

That’s perfectly fine by Phaedrah and I since neither one of us particularly like persimmons. In fact, they’re kind of gross. But the Persimmons Lady likes them, so that is all that matters. It keeps our yard tidy.

Anyway, down the street comes the Persimmons/Ice Cream Lady. At first, I tune out the jingle blasting out of the truck, but then I realize it’s none other than “Intermission” by Tool, one of my favorite bands.

I wave her over, mostly to explain she’s using a progressive-metal band  as her ‘happy’ ice cream truck song. She tells me it is indeed “funny sounding”, but was all she could find that would fit. I simply explain it’s a tad “dark” (the song is in a minor key, of course).

Laughing aside, I buy an ice cream sandwich for Phaedrah and she goes on her way blasting Tool for the masses to hear.  By far, the coolest ice cream truck song ever.