Old and New and Round and Round...!

Just a few things to mention this update, but first: Announcing the fleshing out of an old page, and the creation of a new one!

First: When I was restructuring the photo stash (which is pretty much done, yay), I found...

...many of the photos I used on my old (2005-2006) LiveJournal site. I'd had much of the text archived for some time, but the photos were the missing piece. I've been able to quickly recreate some of the better posts, and that inspired me to finally throw the text-only ones up here as well. Not all of them are done - in fact, some of my best posts (the Haunted Cabin, the Mustang Graveyard [edit: DONE!], the Cottage at Cardinal Hill, and others) are still a bit much to format for now. But they'll be coming in due time. Meanwhile, the LJArchive is now more than just a few lonely links - there's about a dozen entries there now.

Of course the disclaimer is that much if it is semi-emo rambling and introspection that probably won't interest you, unless you really care or want to know more about "me" aka "Tony L. the person" and not "GIC the idiot hobbyist and wannabe writer". So... yeah. Read at your own risk, remember curiosity killed the cat and all that. But on the other hand a lot of people really enjoyed it back in the day.

You can tell I'm a real pushy salesman, can't you?

Secondly and admittedly more exciting is a new ongoing archive of my posts over at Hooniverse, which are actually minty fresh as opposed to 5 years old! More for the auto enthusiast, and I don't get much done these days but I strive for quality over quantity. Anyway if you haven't heard me mention them before, well, here's your official notice! You'll find the "Hoonage!" section in the "Gearheadsim" tab above.

Speaking of Hooniverse, once we get the site migrated to better hosting (this week) I've got a pretty exciting post lined up: an interview with one of Flickr's greatest modeling luminaries. What does that have to do with cars? Stay tuned to the 'verse to find out!

As for things here at gic-com, my Model Railroading rant has been more popular than I anticipated, and host to a few good comments. The latest in particular is pretty well-reasoned and eventually I'd like to offer my counterpoints once I have time to gather them.
I've had a bit of a time trying to stay in touch with friends from another forum since my mutual exile, that on top of other online matters that keep me far too distracted. Some have suggested I start a forum on this site but to be frank, I'm just not certain I want the hassle or bother, especially when there already is a vast number of Model RR forums that do a fine job of serving the community and its various niches quite well. It would seem a forum here would serve nothing more than to stroke my own ego, which is not something I'm keen to do. But it is a compelling idea. For now I have better things to do.

In quick-hit site news: With the assistance of a dear friend, some true early Tyco treasures have appeared in the gallery...

...and speaking of "rants", I forgot how much fun it can be to write when I'm mad. Only trouble is I seem to need a better swearing filter, oops.

On the personal front, I've been stuck in hell at work no thanks to Microsoft's ongoing incompetence with supporting OS Deployment of Server 2008 R2 and Windows 7 using SCCM 2007 R2 SP2. Did that sentence make your head twitch? I assure you that's nothing! According to MS support (technet, whitepapers, et al) it's a fairly convolutededly straightforward process (yes, in MS land that phrase makes perfect grammatical sense) but in practice it's anything but. "SCCM" "2007" "R2" "SP2" is one gigantic clusterfumble of tinkercode: a shiny wrapper encasing various assorted products and plugins and patches and tools and FUD into one horribly bloated MMC Console. And depending on how you upgraded, and what you're trying to do, there could be any number of items to troubleshoot and reinstall and circumvent and re-patch, etc ad infinum ad nauseum. Searching the internet and tech forums turns up no end of problems solved by one-off lucky fixes.

The worst and funniest part? Microsoft's own tech support - the high-dollar "premier" enterprise flavor at that - can't even make sense of it! I've had two reps review our case, and both times was assured it is a simple mis-config issue. Until they have to backtrack and change their approach and the scope of the "issue", arrgh. Still no resolution, nearly a month after I opened the ticket!

I hate computers sometimes, I really do. But I love the internet! Isn't it ironic?

Not really, when it can bring you mind-blowage like THIS:

Oh well... now that that song's stuck in my head, maybe I'll find a use for all the junk down here, and get inspired on to better things...