Concert summary

The Groaning (a DC band) were tolerable; Faith & The Muse were awesome. (And apparently this is their first DC-area show in about seven years.)

Almost no-one I knew was at Nation--next to none of the Alchemy regulars. I recognized a couple guys, like 2501, but it wasn't until later in the evening (during/after F&TM) that I ran into people I'd actually hung out with before--blankkittyblack, Scott (Midnight), and I met a guy named Jim.

While at Nation, I picked up a copy of the City Paper (DC's free weekly), and learned that it carries Savage Love (this week: Readers' childhood sexual misconceptions) and The Straight Dope (this week: "Is a diamond's price a true measure of its value?" Answer: no! Diamonds really aren't that valuable, and it's De Beers' fault)! Awesome.

Should get to sleep soon, have to get up early and all--to work by 0815, through usually-crappy 95N-495N traffic.

First day at ADIC; more against the assault weapons ban

First day at work went well. Traffic wasn't bad on 95N-495N, despite the dreary dampness and the slight fishtail I experienced on the ramp between the two roads, so I was at work by about 0740 (and didn't have to meet Rob until 0815.) So, I went to the bagel place next door and had some juice while I waited.

Around 0810, went in, greeted Rob, met Leo (their newest hire before me, 3-4 months ago), and left with Rob to go to a site near Rockville, where I helped with an upgrade to a tape/storage unit. After that, back to the office, then out to lunch with Leo and Rob at the NY Deli across the street, which has great sandwiches and would totally be at home on the streets of NYC, though I'm not too keen on $9 lunches. (However, Rob covered my lunch, which was a nice surprise. :)

After that, Rob and I headed out to another site in Sterling for a tape drive fix/replacement, in what turned out to be a very secure facility, which Rob has had trouble getting into every time he's visited. It seems to amount to a colocation facility, containing many separate cages of computer/network/storage equipment, protected by guards, bulletproof glass, hand scanners, cameras, single-person airlock-style doors, and a failure to understand who we were with and why we were there. Fun!

Back in the office, I got a lot of reading material, learned more about how site visits are organized and scheduled, learned what training might entail schedule-wise, met a couple of the guys from sales, and learned that ADIC doesn't just sell and support the the data management and storage equipment, they design and manufacture most of the equipment out in Colorado, then sell, install, network, and support it. :) (Thus, sometime in the future, I could potentially get involved in the design of these robotic tape drives. Nifty!)

Tomorrow, I'll be meeting Rob directly at a job site in Rockville, for what's likely to be a short day. On-call work can be a good thing. :) (Unless you get, say, a customer who insists the work on a system get completed all in one visit, requiring one to wait hours for parts to arrive, and not finishing until 6am. :P)

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From jazzfish, more on the assault weapons ban, with facts, citations, and links--and an admonishment to MoveOn.org to do some fact-checking of their own before blindly pushing for the ban's continuation. And I'll provide two links from visgoth again: What the Assault Weapon Ban Does, and Why It's Silly; and, How the Assault Weapons Ban Has Had No Conclusive Effect On Crime