Yesterday night, around 9pm, I got paged because a server was down.

TIER 1 TECHNICIAN: The monitoring system opened a ticket because the server “ancient-pos-4″ went down earlier today.

ME: What are you paging me?

TIER 1 TECHNICIAN: ‘Cause the server went down.

ME: It’s up now.

TIER 1 TECHNICIAN: Yes, but when we try to log in, it asks for a password. We don’t know the password.

ME: Yes, but the fact that the server is asking you for a password means that it’s up.

TIER 1 TECHNICIAN: Yes, but if we can’t log in, we can’t run the “uptime” command to find out how long it’s been up. If it’s been up more than two hours, we can close the ticket. If it’s been up less than two hours, we have to page you.

ME: When did all this actually occur?

TIER 1 TECHNICIAN: In the morning, around 10:00am.

ME: Why am I only now getting paged?

TIER 1 TECHNICIAN: We forgot.

ME: So you knew the server was up around 10:00am?

TIER 1 TECHNICIAN: Yes. But we couldn’t log in to ..

ME (interrupting): And it’s 9:00pm now.

TIER 1 TECHNICIAN: Yes.

ME: And you haven’t gotten any other tickets about the server going down in between then and now?

TIER 1 TECHNICIAN: No.

ME: But you’re not sure whether the server has been up for more than two hours?

TIER 1 TECHNICIAN: No, because, like I said, we can’t log into the server to run the “uptime” command.

ME: Buddy, I can buy you a ticket for the Logic Train, but I can’t make you ride.

List of changes the Dems are sure to make now that they’re in charge of the House:

http://www.rightwasright.us/

My favorite:

23. Ban Christmas: replace with Celebrate our Monkey Ancestors Day

You know, one of the things I don’t miss about being unemployed is daytime network TV. Yeah, that’s right. I don’t have cable.

As near as I can tell, there are only four things on TV during the day:

1) Soaps starring B-list celebrities
2) Talk shows featuring B-list celebrities and incredibly stupid people
3) Paid programming trying to take money from incredibly stupid people
4) Small-claims court shows featuring incredibly stupid people

The Spanish-language channel is a little better. It has all the same crappy shows, but with mega cleavage. The soaps. The talk show hosts. Even the Spanish version of Judge Judy has a low-cut blouse. (I really hope I don’t catch their version of Judge Joe Brown.)