I don’t post stuff like this very often, but man, it’s cool:
Today I got my new fiberoptic switch in and found out that, despite what my Account Manager told me, the switch requires fiber transceivers for each fiber connection (he told me I didn’t need them, that they were built in). Anyway, it sucked when I opened the box and realized that I had to go buy four more transceivers ($170/each) and new fiberoptic cables (they sent me the wrong ones as well)—but to top it all off I have to put off my network upgrade until these parts get here. So I was a little frustrated. But when my contact at Dell called, we got everything straightened out, and he threw in a crapload of free hardware (about $700 worth!) for the trouble. So I got another one of these switches, along with two more fiber transceivers and a cable, plus a laserjet printer, all for a little less than the original price of the four new transceivers and cables. So I’m a happy Dell customer once more.
While at Hastings on Saturday, I ran across a book that piqued my curiosity, so I bought it, and it’s pretty funny:
The Hollow Chocolate Bunnies of the Apocalypse, by Robert Rankin. It’s got mixed reviews on Amazon, probably because people expect it to be exactly like a Douglas Adams book or some such nonsense. And the author Jasper Fforde (sounds like a pen name to me) is mentioned several times, but I’ve never read any of his books. Perhaps I’ll look in to one.
Anyway, the book is full of witty banter and bad puns, but I was hooked from the first page. It’s a very different story about a young man that goes to the city to make his fortune, only to find out it’s “Toy City”, and there’s a serial killer on the loose, offing popular nursery rhyme characters. Humpty Dumpty is the first to get it, boiled in his high-rise apartment’s swimming pool.
Despite the bad puns and dry humor (or perhaps because of them), I’ve read more than half the book already, and hope to finish it soon. So give it a try, you just might like it.