Llamas and Other Happenings

For the sake of plot continuity, a summary of recent and upcoming events:

**

I have a new home, my own little room with a queen bed and a mirrored closet-- just like a porno studio! I'm in a triplex on a small alleyway and have two roomates with a lot in common-- we're all geeks in relationships with people in other states. But we're not alone our geeky world; we're surrounded by the orgling and bleating of Llamas on the left, on the right and across the alleyway. This, after all, is the Llama District.

So what the hell is a Llama?

"Llama" is a CounterStrike term-- if you don't know what CS is, it's a computer game-- term, originally used for people who are being surly bitches. The Urban Dictionary defines a Llama as "someone who hangs out in another clans IRC channel...trying all they can just to fit in," but I like to think that a Llama is sort of like "that guy," the one that won't shut up and no one wants to be around. That's a Llama.

The original Llamas live across the street in both sides of a duplex, Cockblocker and Trinity, Kilo, Blaze, and Matticus. Cockblocker ran the CS server on which the Llamas of the Llama District originally congrigated, and had an administrator script, "Llama," that when used, effectively "gagged" an obnoxious person, changed their name to Llama and made it so that all they could say was "bleat," "orgle," and "gwar." (Or so legend has it.)

Us second-generation Llamas live in all three units of the triplex facing the other side of the alley. It's our own little commune of geekiness, our own District-- just "the D" to be brief.

**

I came back to campus on Monday, was run around by no less than four administrative departments, found the health center to be closed and realized I forgot my ID so I couldn't get a new one. Meh. Sooo.... I gave up on running errands and went back to work.

What's work?

Work is where the Llamas go when they're not at class. University of Oregon's "Microcomputer Services." Why is it called THAT? I've never been able to figure it out. Is it as if we were going to DENY service to Macrocomputers?

I do tech support, basically. I'm that evil person on the other end of the line, the BOFH, who tries to couvince you, the Idiot User with the p.o.s. computer, that everything is going to be O.K.

Normally, I'm "outsourced" from central to campus departments, where I get to work face-to-face with faculty and staff, which is both not-so-bad and almost worse than phone and desk support. For the moment, I'm doing the 'on call' thing-- perfect re-training, as I haven't had my hands on a PC for almost a year. Thank God the UO has started to like Macs.

What is tech support like, you ask? Pretty much everything you can imagine...

Yesterday, I recieved a call at 4:57, three minutes before I was supposed to leave. Thirty-two minutes later, I hung up. The called was a girl from the UO Sororities... my first warning. She had been in to our offices and got her wireless and LAN working, and now it wasn't working... my second warning. I ran some typical checks before going straight into the idiot-proofing. Did she have her LAN cable plugged into the correct jack? Neither worked. As there were other people in the room, I had them bring in their laptops to test if the connection worked on theirs, an easy way to tell if the jack simply wasn't active. This took much longer than it should have, and right when we determined the jack wasn't working, her friends began to laugh at her...

She was using a phone, NOT ETHERNET, cable to connect her PC to the wall. She'd had me convinced it was a LAN cable, and at the very least, was quite polite and apologetic about her idiocy... but she still wasted 1/2 hour of my off time. That, folks, is a CLASSIC CALL.

Today I've been troubleshooting a Norton Antivirus problem with a girl who, I kid you not, started to ask me advice about how to keep her new cat from shitting in the corners of her house while the program ran its lengthy scans. OK, I love pets and all, but I'm not here to run tech support for your cat's anus. >.<

Good times, good times.

**

I've so far spent a s**tload of money on books, bike repairs, grocieres and supplies and require a f**kton more to actually completely move into my room, stock my kitchen, vacinnate my cat, etc. etc. Read: this is money I DO NOT HAVE after rent and bills. And, thanks to the UO's Simply Retarded pay schedule, I will not get paid until the end of October. Normally, I'd have a credit card to prevent trouble in cash-less times, and I'm always prompt with repayment, yada, yada, but my card expired in August and my Bank lacked the proper policy that should have sent me a replacement BEFORE THAT FACT. So, the card is in the mail-- somewhere-- en route to my SEATTLE address and, the long and the short, is not HERE. Grrrreat.

Come this Friday I will be, for the first time since early high school, physically broke. I will have NO savings, NO credit and NO cash in pocket-- with outstanding purchases.

So. Screwed.

Fuck you, Paris Hilton, those millions are totally wasted on your vapish sluttyness. Where's my rich benefactor? Grah.

**

Well, c'est la vie. Being po' is just a fact of college life, and all will sort out in the end. I've got other, bigger, kinkier fish to fry than finances... Folsom Fair is this weekend and that means I'mma going to SAN FRANCISCO, for the first time in memory, to help retail rope for Twisted Monk. Then, back to classes on Monday. Did I mention being screwed by the bureaucracy? As of this moment, due to circumstances totally BEYOND my control, I'm registered for exactly ONE academic class out of the FOUR I need, and a 2-credit, once-a-week class at that. I'm not even in the PE class I intend to take.

As they say at McDonalds, I'm lovvin' it. This is back to school.