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But with a whisper

So yesterday was a landmark day. It was the day I went in to work to get the last of my stuff. Of course, I haven’t actually done any work since December, but I’ve had my account and access and all sorts of stuff since then. But the time came where the company actually called my boss on the fact that we’ve sort of pushed the 2 year limit on contractors, and made them cut me loose.

I came in and packed up everything, had a batch of nostalgic conversation, ran into a bunch of people, almost everyone that I’d care to find… and the last two I ran into on the way out. Also on the way out, in a very weird coincidence, we ran into another 8 year Yahoo, and it was also his last day.

So, unlike most people, I didn’t have a big going away party. I didn’t get a cake, I didn’t get a party, but then again, it wasn’t like I had a traditional departure. As I carted out six boxes full of toy hamsters and o’reilly books, and era was ending, and there was no fanfare, nothing to signify my passing. I left, not with a bang…

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In happier news…

Fortunately, before the spammers decided that I’d be a really good target for pharmaceutical emails, it was our Chains of Promathia night in FFXI. It started as a group of about 12 people and we’ve been meeting every Friday night for a few months now. Our numbers dwindled down, and we stabilized at 7. This, of course, meant we had to many things twice, as a lot of the fights are capped to 6 people per fight. But we all knew each other, so we weren’t cutthroat and cut anyone loose. We just had to make sure we were good enough to handle it.

And we did. Compared to what it sounds like other groups did, we had surprisingly little resistance working through the missions. Part of this was because we had some incredibly flexible job selections to work with, almost everyone in the group had at least 2, if not 3 or 4 jobs at 60+, and quite a few with multiple 75 jobs. Two weeks ago, we did the airship fight (6-4), one of the hardest fights, if not the hardest fight, and beat it on our third attempt. Then we did it again last week for the seventh member and only had one false start.

That meant that today was 7-4 and 7-5. 7-4 is just a bunch of random NMs that are uncapped (as is everything from this point, yay… no more using level 60 gear), then 7-5 is another “kill kill kill fast fast fast” fight. We died a few times, but switched a bunch of jobs around and managed to kill him… what’s that mean?

Yes, what’s that mean?

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Spam killed my Linux machine

… well, for a while, at least.

I noticed that my ssh window was stalled, so I tried pinging it. It responded just fine, and was also still routing the NATted computers. So I went downstairs to try a console.

They were locked up, or so I thought, it was just very very slow. I managed to get a top running, and to my surprise, there were about 40 spamassassin processes running, eating up all of the memory and swapping constantly, causing the machine to be very slow. Thinking that if I cut the supply of incoming mail, it might free up the machine, I killed the fetchmail process.

It took about half an hour, but it eventually settled back down to normal. I then upgraded spamassassin and procmail and pretty much everything else on the machine, hoping that it would solve the problem. I started it back up, and within seconds, the processes were back and it was locked again. I killed the process and waited another 30 minutes, tried poking around, and eventually just gave up, let the thing run and hoped it had worked it all out by the morning.

This morning, it was back to normal, I had 250 new emails (all for the same thing, obviously part of the same drop) that made it through the spam filter and who knows how many more that got caught.

God. Damned. Spam.

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Wondercon

I am typing this up (but not submitting it, ’cause there’s no internet) at the AOD booth in the press section of the exhibit hall. Across from us is Lyta from DS9. To our right are, in order from far to near, Chewbacca, the original Lois Lane, Timmy from Lassie, and Lt. Boomer.

No, not that Boomer. The original.

Yes, it’s the press section of Wondercon: where old stars go to die.

Edit: After checking IMDB, I have discovered it’s spelled “Leeta.” I fail as a nerd.

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It’s been a week…

… so here’s your obligatory short entry to keep myself from getting nudged.

Looking for a job, sent out my resume to a few places, put it on Monster.com, where, so far, only recruiters have noticed it, and I’m not too keen on that. I’d like to have control where I’m applying.

Still playing WoW. Got my Druid up to 50 so far, getting close to 51. Started a Mage on ‘s server.

Got Black Mage to 75 in FFXI, but I’m still lacking in the gear department. *Sigh* Will I ever get an Igqira Weskit? Next is leveling MNK to 18, as a sub-job for WAR, which is going to 37 as a full sub. Then after that is probably SMN to 37… and in the meantime I keep funneling my Miratete’s Memoirs into THF to get it to 37 without actually exping on it. This is mostly in preparation for taking DRK to 75, but I’m still not sure that’s the next job I want to take up. The Lure of BRD is too tempting. (I got it to 38 and it looks like the most expensive purchases I’d need to make are at 40, and it’s all just cruising along until the 70s… if only it didn’t take so many equipment slots for the instruments.)