Another round on the iPod

7,223. That's the number of song tracks on my iPod that I listened from the beginning of the year through yesterday -- some of them more than once too.

Using a smart playlist with the setting of excluding any song played after 1/1/09, I began on January first determined to listen to every song on my iPod this year. I also decided that I would listen to them as albums (at least for those that aren't included in other playlists I normally listen to while driving with the Queen and Princesses). 

So you can see that it took 3 months, 8 days to accomplish this monumental task, but there were a couple of factors that made the process take a little bit longer than it would have otherwise taken. Actually, one big factor that made it take longer.

When I started the year out, I had around 6,400 songs on this playlist. Yeah, apparently adding 800 more songs increased the time a little. Go figure. I also only really listen to my iPod at work, so I can only devote listening time during those 9 hours, but most people at my workplace are used to seeing me plugged in almost 100% of the time.

The only other slowdown factor has to do with the movies on my iPod that I occasionally try to watch. Naturally, that takes away about two hours of song listening, so while not a major factor, it did slow me down a little. Then again, I have movies that I loaded back in October that I still haven't watched.

Maybe I should do that next instead of just resetting the date on my playlist to today. Sure, I've knocked out 37 songs as of right now in listening to the whole thing again, but movies dating back to October... Well, it's kinda hard to watch movies at work, but maybe I'll look into dividing the time up a little better.

A New Addition to the Family

This is something the Queen and I have been discussing for a little while now, and our only hangup has been finding what we were looking for in such a thing. We'd been here and there around town, but nother ever either met our fancy, or we flat couldn't afford it. Yesterday, we finally found one.

I'm talking about a puppy. We wanted a lab or golden retriever, since we wanted to ensure it would be good with the princesses, and we also wanted to get a male so we didn't have to deal with it going into heat periodically. Also, neutering is cheaper than spaying.


On Saturday, Bond sent us a message stating that he had spotted someone with free lab mix puppies in a parking lot, and as the Queen was out with the princesses at the zoo (a location I was reminded of later), I went on my own to check them out. The problem with me going on my own? I'm really impulsive on my own.


Naturally, when I got there, I did my best to converse with the Queen over whether or not to pick up one of the dwindling number of puppies remaining, but the pictures didn't come out well, and she was in the middle on something on her end of the line, so she said to do whatever I thought on it. Heh-heh. You can see where this is going right?


Well, yeah, I guess you can because I gave it away at the beginning...um...yeah.


When I got there, there were three left. I saw one in the midst of the three that I thought would be good. I didn't know whether it was male or female; I just locked onto it, and hoped that the Queen would think they would work for us. As I was standing there, two of them went away, leaving only the one that I originally wanted. Rather clinched it for me, and when the Queen gave her go ahead. I snagged him.

The drive home was interesting. I decided to drive with him sitting on my lap so in case he got nervous and lost control of his bladder, he would pee on me instead of our nice leather seats. I figured I would be a lot easier to clean up, and besides, the car did made him nervous, and he whimpered, so I served to comfort him as well. Turns out, we got home without incident.

The Queen and Princesses got home after I'd had him outside for a little while, and this is what they saw.

Cute, huh?

He's been really good so far. It was supposed to rain last night so we had him inside locked in a carrier, and I natually full expected him to piddle in his bed, but he didn't. His bed was dry when I got up six hours later and let him out. Yeah, he was whimpering, probably due to a full bladder, but at only 8 weeks, and on his first night to not soil his bed was completely impressive to me.

He's a lab/german shepherd mix, which I hear is a good combo of a lab's mellowness and a german shepherd's protectiveness. He's been really good with the princesses so far, so after only a day, I'm thinking he'll shape up to be a good dog.

Got huge paws, though, which means he'll be pretty big. The collar we have on him at the moment is tightened way down, but he should grow into it, if not outgrow it within a year. We did name him, in the tradition of everyone else's aliases, I have one for him. He is The Hunter.

Heck of a Day

Wow. Today was more like a day and a half. With the cutbacks on hours and such, I hadn't worked all the way through a lunch in a couple months, and today, I didn't have much of a choice aas I wolfed down my ramen noodles in between dealing with the chaos that erupted today. Almost literally, the sky was falling and Chicken Little didn't warn us about any of it.

It took some research, but at about 10:00, we discovered the problem started at 6:04 this morning when the Enterprise Data Center that handles 30% of our Medicare traffic decided it didn't want to make any of its product selections valid. The jobs assigned to this data center failed like crazy, and while we're used to seeing these types of failures, they've never been on a scale like this before. Just restarting these tasks wasn't working. Nothing was working.

One curiosity though. It seems that the problem only occurred via our software's load balanced IP address. We found using the "old address" that doesn't have the capacity to deal with our daily traffic, but can handle us running our little tests managed to access this data center without any problem at all. Well, that's misspeaking. We can access the center, we just couldn't access the Medicare system because it told us the options were "unavailable." This lead me to the next part of this task...

Someone had to start making some calls, and the best starting place was our connection vendor. Being that I'd been in the middle of this from the beginning, I made the call. The person was very nice, listened to the problem, and when I walked him through it, he said that since we're able to get into the EDC menus, the connection they're providing appears to be working, and we would have to contact EDC for further assistance. I thanked him, took the number, and prepared to call EDC, or for all intents and purposes, Medicare.

And this is where the nightmare began...

It was around lunchtime when I hit this part of my adventure. We'd learned a lot so far, and just had to get this one hurdle out of the way to determine where to go next. So I made the call. not only were their lines busy, but I got a busy signal. I continued to call every 5 to 10 minutes and continued to get a busy signal.

Finally, I got through to the hold music, so I waited. Twenty minutes later, a guy picked up. I explained who I was and that our software that interacts with their system is unable to reach FSS because we're getting a message in our logs that states the application we're selecting is unavailable. He asked if this was the login screen. I explained it again that it was after the login screen at the selection screen. He asked is this was in FSS. I explained yet again that it was before that. He said if we're having problems with the login, we had to call someone else. I explained again that it was after the login and before the FSS. He finally got it, and said I had to call a different number. I explained it again, and he asked which provider I was with. This lead me to believe that I was in the right place. I said I maintain the software used by the providers to access their system and we're getting this error message. He asked for a login. I don't have a login. He wanted one. I pulled a log and gave him one. He said I shouldn't be using a login since I'm not a provider. Is this a trap?

Finally, the guy completely shut down and declared he could not help me since I'm not a provider and was not authorized to use the login. This was an exceptionally weird turn of the conversation, but all right. He wasn't budging and I certainly couldn't make him, regardless of the fact that it apparently dealt with our connection as opposed to a login issue (unless over 100 providers suddenly had login problems). He wouldn't talk so that was over..

I would not be swayed, however. You see, I know people. My next step was fiendishly clever, since I knew I could beat this yahoo and make him talk to me. What did I do? I called a provider who is hyper-spastic about her system working. It was broken, and she'd want it fixed. I called her and she was more than happy to be the provider and get him to talk to me.

I called back and it was busy. I let her know I'd give her a ring when I got through.

Fifteen minutes later, I called her back because I was on hold again. We waite twenty minutes and we got the same guy. He recognized me and said he wasn't able to talk to me earlier because I wasn't a provider. I told him I wet out and found one to talk to him. He spoke exclusively with her for a short while, and was actually very rude about doing so.

Finally, I had my chance and I let him have it. I explained the problem yet again. Are you at the login screen? No, after that. In FSS? No, before that. Didn't we go over this before? I talked to this guy for another ten minutes trying to make him understand the big problem, and you know what he finally told me? You have to call this other department; I don't deal with that. He made a point of telling me that he told me this earlier. I made a point of telling him in return that when I had given him further information earlier and then he conversed about it, I thought it was something he handled. He said something about the systems department handling the hyperterminal connection, which sounded very techie and could be right, so I acquiesced and said I'd call this other number. He was apparently happy about that because he rather immediately hung up.

I was not happy. I was shaking I was so frustrated with this turn of events. All day and still nothing to show for myself. The lady I'd gotten on the phone, however, said I was awesome. Probably because I kept a very cool head, discussed the system in more detail than anyone had any business to, and pushed hard for him to help me, even though he didn't in the end. She was probably just happy that someone was trying.

Well, I called the other number and got a message stating that they were very busy and unable to take any calls at this time and to leave a voicemail. I was ok with this, and prepared to leave a message. I hate talking to voicemail because I think I sound like an idiot. Well, I was spared becuase the next message stated that the voice mailbox was full and I couldn't leave a message. There's government funding for you. Shoddy service and a full voicemail. Someone should check it.

Anyway, I waited until later and called again. This time, I got through to systems, or better known to them as their EDI department. I explained the problem and who I was and what I needed. The woman, who sounded very nice, told me she doesn' deal with the DDE at all. No, she handles batch clearinghouse processing, not the interactiveness of the DDE. I needed to talk to the department I started at...you know, the jerk who told me to call this number?

But all was not lost. No, I got an email address for their DDE support, so I could at least email them. I commented on this to Optimus Prime who told me that there would be a three month wait for a reply on it, or so he had last heard. Well, whether that is the case or not, I figured I'd email anyway.

Five minutes later, I got a reply...or rather, a delivery notification stating that the email address wasn't valid. Something tells me these people aren't interested in helping me.