Adam Hays :: The Blog

Unhealthy Compulsive Obsession – We Will Fall Behind.

adamhays — Tue, 22 Feb 2011 18:14:12 +0000

I don’t mean to put anyone on the spot. I don’t want to call anyone out based on what they like, what they believe in, what their dreams are etc. etc. But I think there needs to be somewhat of an intervention with anyone who allows their “hobbies” to turn unhealthy and grab hold of life in a negative way. Don’t you remember mom saying “Too much of a good thing always blah blah blah blah”? No? I didn’t think you would.

I’ll be the first to admit, I’m a twenty-something year old hipster that listens to underground extreme forms of music, and I have that “if you hate it, I love it and if you love it, I hate it” kind of attitude on almost anything that someone can push the “like” button on. I do realize this about myself, and I know that sometimes it can produce a biased opinion. That being said, I’m going to share my opinion on Justin Bieber, his fans, the corporate face of the Recording Industry and last but not least, consumerism.

You remember the Boy-Band blow up of the early to mid-nineties? Those times are among us again but this time around, we have been blessed with not another group of athletic, perfect genetically structured dude-bro’s but with Justin Bieber , Americas favorite Canadian under the age of 19. The record companies are going nuts. He is selling. Someone is marketing this kid something fierce and I don’t see that being extinguished anytime soon. I don’t know much about his personal upbringing, nor do I care, and there isn’t enough Vodka, Tonic water, or Colanapins in the western hemisphere to get me doped up enough to go see his new movie. To skip out on all the long blah blahs that go into this part of the text to simulate an automated build up, let’s just take a look at some of the things that pop up when you search Google for our young beady-eyed savior.

Here’s the thing, well-endowed soccer mom. If you have to ask if your child’s Justin Bieber obsession is turning unhealthy, then you already know the answer to that question. I believe that there are a lot, not all fans, but a lot of obsessed fans that have developed unhealthy compulsive behavior that is triggered whenever they hear the words Justin or Bieber. When it gets to a point that there are children talking about committing suicide at the word that Justin’s relationship status has changed to “In a Relationship” then it is beyond a doubt a very huge problem. With an effect on consumers at this magnitude, if Justin Bieber wore black clothing, painted his face and sang about Satan the media would be ready to crucify him. He’s not singing about goat slaughter and Satanic ritual though.. He’s singing plastic manufactured love songs to our youth and getting the same result.

Consumerism is the biggest cause of mindlessness in America. While extremists are searching for another scapegoat, I place blame into the hands of capitalist brainwash marketing techniques that flood the airwaves and internet. They hit the nail right on the head with Justin Bieber, A record company finding a cute kid that can pull off singing their manufactured lullabies making it nearly impossible to go a day without hearing about it. And even smarter, they put Bieber with major players that everyone has been listening to for years. Anyone who is a supporter of corporate radio, anyone who is a consumer of all things in pop culture is instantly and utterly hooked like a big mouth bass being fooled by an attractant caked worm. Hook, line, sinker. Here’s the point-

Justin Bieber is cool. I got it. But do you really have to remind me every 5 fucking minutes? Honestly Bieber fans are force feeding their shit to anyone and everyone on every single social media platform. This world does not revolve around Justin Bieber and I think it’s completely disrespectful that more people care about the kind of product that he uses in his hair verses major life changing events that happen around the world and in this country. This is border line cult-like mentality, this is thinking as a group entity rather than an individual, this is mindless consumerism, this is millions of people falling for the traps set by business men who have dollar signs for eyes and manipulation for a soul.

Adam and Steve

adamhays — Thu, 17 Feb 2011 17:45:24 +0000

It has been a rough morning. After spending time with Chris Pirillo, I have been thinking a lot about his recent vblog about Steve Jobs, and everything that is going on with his health. There have been a lot of claims that Steve Jobs is terminally ill and only has 6 weeks to live. A lot of these posts have been by non-credible sources but none the less he has taken his 3rd leave of health sense 2004 when he was being treated for Pancreatic Cancer. I got pretty upset this morning because this is a figure that has been in my life for as long as I can remember. I grew up with Apple at home, as my mom worked for a few companies that made Apple hardware components, and she was a regular at Macworld for many years. I knew of Steve Jobs and Wozniak from a very young age, and would flip through Macworld Magazine countless numbers of times when other kids where watching Nick Jr and reading comic books. Every January my mom would come home from San Francisco and give me Macworld t-shirts, Apple posters, buttons, pens and anything else that she could bring back. I would wear the shirts to school on a regular basis and hang the posters in my room. Apple was everywhere and by far the best way to describe myself.

It’s 70 degrees outside in Kansas in the middle of February…And I’m sad.

I Think I Forgot to Mention

adamhays — Tue, 15 Feb 2011 18:02:02 +0000

Funny, I was just looking over my older posts and I failed to mention some pretty big life changes. I’ll try to make this as painless as possible.

I no longer work at LS Management on the Infrastructure team.

Being in IT, you must understand and expect to be used as the scape goat time and time again, this actually resulted in our funding company outsourcing the Infrastructure team to a company from the Middle East. Score.
This was a horrible idea from the get go and they know that now, that’s why the person that pulled the trigger on this plan is being sacrificed to the corporate White Collar business gods. Score.

I am now a Network Administrator at Rusty Eck Ford in Wichita, Kansas.

Responsible for helping manage the IT side of this company
Responsible for all system/server health and security on this network
Responsible for testing and deployment of software applications on a global scale throughout the organization.
Management of 400+ users on a Microsoft Windows Server 2003 environment at 4 different locations throughout the Midwest United States.
Management of phone systems that are a few years older then myself.

My HQ is now in a pre WWII historic house with a 2 car over-sized garage.

Been holding it down since July of 2010
Have a car in the garage that is wrecked and doesn’t run
Pit bull/Shepherd mix named Yellow. He’s a pansy but I love him.
92836418927346 old Apple computers taking up space in my basement.

In the very early planning stages of a few web projects

I’m not providing details about that right now but will probably blog about it soon as things develop.

Full time Grindcore/ Progressive band that we have named “Barricades”

Barricades practices every Money and Wednesday in my living room.
All 5 members leave their gear set up 24/7 which leaves me with a warm fuzzy feeling when I see it.
I feel like I finally have the best lineup that anyone could ever ask for in this genre of music.
I would anticipate a demo release in a few months, which will be posted on the Music section of this blog.

Still writing electronic music with Ableton Live and other various DAWs.

Not much to say about this, I make beats and stuff and then play them over and over until I’m sick of it, then I stop and go do something else.

I think that’s all for now. Currently at 85 % life satisfaction. Lets see if we can break 95% before summer.

-Adam

Oh you mean its not the weekend?

adamhays — Tue, 15 Feb 2011 16:52:31 +0000

Woke up this morning thinking that it was Saturday, I probably ended up sleeping too long because of this. Got to the office at 10am instead of my normal 7:30-8ish ETA. Red Bull in hand, had to diagnose a Windows 2000 machine this morning.. NIC dropped out of the device manager, got it running functionally again by the typical delete/reboot method. Now have to call Reynolds and Reynolds because the newest version of their ERAccess doesn’t want to play nicely with this ancient version of Windows.. This should be fun.

Yea New Yearz and Stuff.

adamhays — Tue, 04 Jan 2011 22:42:36 +0000

List O’ Goalz.

Have moar funz
Learn moar Shitz
Check out San Francisco for a week or twoz
Save moar moneyz.
Keep on Nutrition routinez

Moar Ghosts N Stuff

Random notez

adamhays — Fri, 03 Dec 2010 22:48:04 +0000

I don’t blog that much even when I say that I’m going to, okay? Shut up.

Exchange back up not running properly thus not clearing the logs-

Transaction logs fill up on server 5.5mb in size each-

Drive fills up-

Exchange goes down-

Clear 5gb of Transaction logs then reboot-

20 minutes later when the dinosaur wakes up problem is solved (for about a week or so while you frantically try to figure out what the problem is with the Exchange back up)-

Get off work and drink and complain over Twitter-

Adam

test

adamhays — Thu, 28 Oct 2010 19:14:17 +0000

test?

Bed knobs and MacBooks

adamhays — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 15:33:46 +0000

This morning I woke up very early to a bunch of tweets and texts from my girlfriend who was expressing her
excitement of the release of the new MacBook Pro. I was also overcame by a sense of joy and glee when I saw the “We’ll Be Back Soon.” Note on the face of the Apple.com store.

Today Apple has finally released the new MacBook Pros. The respective 13 inch road warrior got a brand spanking new
Intel Core 2 Duo 2.4Ghz and 2.66Ghz Processors, (need to confirm weather the 2.66ghz is the T9550 w/6MB Cache and
1066GSB or the P8800 w.3MB Cache and 1066 FSB) new Nvidia Geforce 320M graphics, and a whopping 10hr battery. Still
starting at $1,199.00 the mobility king is not a bad way to go to meet all your mobility needs.

I myself am very excited to try out the new Core i5/i7 processor MacBook Pro. The 15 inch starting at $1,799
features a 2.4Ghz Intel Core i5 Processor all the way up to an outstanding 2.66 Intel Core i7 for you die hard
mobile A/V crunchers. In this upgrade, users can take advantage of new technology such as Turbo Boost, Built-in
Hyper-Threading, Integrated memory controllers and Nvidia Optimus technology. It’s a very exciting time for Apple
and technology enthusiasts. Apple has again raised the performance and mobility bar challenging the industry to go
further beyond expectations to progressively enhance future user experience.

Good Customer Service Techniques

adamhays — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 18:53:30 +0000

This morning I had an appointment with a dermatologist to check out my skin, and to provide some insight on other potentially concerning issues and questions that I had. First of all, I went to this clinic after doing personal research because the specialist that my doctor recommended to me moved out of state. So I arrived at my appointment only to find out that they pushed it back an extra 25 minutes. This could have been much worse, but time is money and the last thing that I want to do is sit in an office (besides my own) and not get paid for it. My health is important, I can deal with this. Finally, after all the paper work was filled out and my name was called, I went back and met the doctor. His nurses treated me with kindness and respect, just as they should, as I am a paying customer. When the doctor came back, it was a completely different story. He was very rude to me, his demeanor was very high, and the last thing that he told me before storming out was to not come back to his office after making things up.

I work for a shared services company that provides backend solutions for businesses in the restaurant/hospitality industry. Customer service is our number one priority, and we make sure that every one of our customers issues are taken care of with a professional sense of urgency. No matter how tough or taboo, rain or shine, we will get our customers requests processed and completed on time. When dealing with customer service, consistency is the key to success. People keep going back to McDonalds to buy a Big Mac, because they know it will be the same Big Mac that they have purchased and enjoyed several times over.

In the IT field, customer service is extremely important. Here is a simple system to follow in any field, not just limited to IT.

Let me introduce: THE G SYSTEM

Get it done right the first time
Get it done on time
Go the extra mile
Genuine and Sincere
Get Paid (I added this one in because I know we all love getting paid)

Moral of the story: Take some pride in your job no matter what it is by following THE G SYSTEM, Get a second opinion from a respectable dermatologist, GET PAID.

I’m sensing that something around the office is going to blow up today; maybe I’ll post something Techy later on that isn’t me ranting.

-Adam

…Years Later

adamhays — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 19:04:15 +0000

So this week I have been coming across a bunch of old blogs that I used to visit and I decided that I wanted to pick it up again. I couldn’t decide how to go about this process, as there are so many different ways to get vocal online these days. Because of the way my brain works now, I immediately started over-thinking things and looked into various hosting companies and was about ready to pick out a nice and comfy spot to host my non-existent blog. I feel horrible, honestly I completely forgot about this blog that I created with a promise to keep things updated. Almost two and a half years later, I’m ready to give it another go. Let’s get reacquainted.

Last time I pushed submit in this beautifully crafted CMS, I had a pretty sweet Pod Cast going called Tech and The City. We won’t go into any specifics, but I’ll just say that TATC is no longer in production and ended way too soon because of a partnership that (for the sake of simplicity) went sour. Not sour like Sour Skittles, but sour like sour milk that has been sitting out in the sun for days and is now causing a disturbance with the people down the block. Yes, it was that bad. This type of sour has somehow been able to follow me around over the past couple years and has been the root cause of many headaches across many states effecting many, many people. Let’s be frank: This person is running out of places to hide, and if this particular person reads this text, that particular individual should be warned that their time is running out and the walls are closing in fast. There is no way out.

Another huge difference is the drastic career change. For the last couple years I have been working as a Systems Engineer for a shared services company in Wichita, Kansas called LS Management. If you have ever enjoyed a steak dinner from Lone Star Steakhouse and Saloon, Del Frisco’s Double Eagle Steakhouse, Sullivan’s Steakhouse, or Texas Land and Cattle, chances are I have worked on the systems there and the back end technical solutions. It’s not what I had in mind about 3 years ago when I worked as a custom system builder at a now respectable computer company, but I have made it my own and I enjoy supporting a network of this size.

I really miss being a full time gigging musician, and bands and opportunities have came and gone, but I think that everything happens for a reason and sooner or later those reasons become more apparent. These days I spend most of my free time as a studio musician and am currently working on a Blues Rock trio that is looking very promising.

I think that’s a good enough update for now. I’m not going to make any promises for this blog but I’m going to put forth more of an effort to keep this updated. It can be very therapeutic. Lets do more Tech/Geek stuff in 2010. After all, it is Year Of The Spaceship.

-Adam