Yes, one of those days.

You know the ones? The kind where nothing really goes right. Nothing goes very wrong, but nothing really goes right. I shouldn’t even complain, there are a lot of people in the world who have it so much worse than me. But I can’t help it… today everything just seemed to be conspiring against me.

Where to start…

Work? Oh yeah, work is great. Well, not great, but actually shitty. Why? It’s hard to put it in words really, its more of a feel than anything in particular. For example, today we had our one of twice weekly project meetings. We got through the agenda, my boss said that we were done. I packed up my shit and went to my desk, cause I had shit to take care of. After a while, it dawned on me that the other Network Engineers were still in the conference room. My boss had left, I had left but they were still in there. They remained in there for about 45 minutes.

I don’t know what they talked about. What I do know is that what ever it was, they didn’t feel the need to consult or ask me about it. Nor did they feel the need to update me on what ever it was.

Wow. Don’t I feel like an important and integral part of my ‘team?’ No I don’t. Not even a little bit.

My made up club, the shitty blogs club’s domain name seems to be parked at godaddy. The fact of the matter is The domain name and hosting were gifted to me. Same thing for shitty blog radio. I think the SBC domain name expired. The SBR one will be next. It was bound to happen sooner or later. I’m not 100% sure why it happened, but I’m fairly certain that there is more than a reasonable explanation for it. Hell, I can’t complain about that part at all.

The problem is, since it I didn’t register it, I can’t renew it. Whois shows it as expired, but none of the registration places will let me purchase it. Is this because of a bit of lag in the whole registration thing, or did some one else buy it? I don’t know. I am powerless to do much about it. I could register .net domains, but I’m not sure if it is worth it.

The bigger issue will be when shittyblogradio.com goes… I can register the domain, but I can’t afford to replace the level of hosting I’ve been enjoying. I’m not sure what I am going to do about that either.

At the gym, I was just stiff enough to stop me from running well.

My car was in for regular maintenance, so I couldn’t drive home for lunch. So I skipped it.

So on and so forth.

Just one of those days.

I had plans for this weekend. I really did. They revolved around watching Sci-Fi shows I’d DVR’ed and reading comic books.

There were a few productive things I meant to squeeze in there, but I was ready to do a whole lot of not very much.

Of course, I should have known that couldn’t happen. I’m not very good at doing nothing. Saturday morning I reached the final straw with my PC. One too many little quirky things had happened. I had no doubt what the was wrong.

The computer is almost four years old. The hardware is still very usable, I over-spec’ed it when I bought it for just that reason. But in the course of four years who know what the hell I’ve installed and uninstalled on this thing. I’m a geek, a tinkerer and a bit of a hacker. If there is something new and nifty I’ve probably checked it out. Installed it, tried a few things got bored and forgot about it. The cumulative effect from that alone would cause issues sooner or later.

But let’s be honest. Not everything I do on this computer is exactly on the up and up. Nothing terrible, but I sometimes have occasion to go to undesirable sites and sometimes even brave a download or two. And sometimes I get more than I bargain for.

Whatever the root cause was, I was done with it. I took an inventory of what was installed that I actually use. (Which was a pretty short list compared to what was installed.) I moved the data that was on the C: drive to the external drive. And then I formatted the damn thing.

I seriously considered loading Ubuntu. There are some real advantages to that, but in the end laziness won out. I know what I need in XP and how to set it up pretty quickly. I didn’t want to spend the time or energy configuring Linux to see my mixer and get shoutcast working; or make it see the RAW files from my camera so that I can manage my photo.

I installed XP, the drivers, SP2 and pulled down a shitload of patches. I joined the PC to my home domain and then started installing software.

That’s when things got ugly. I was trying to install a piece of software that I had… ahem… lost the key to. I proceeded to visit some shady sites that might be able to give a key I could use… since mine was… err… lost. I wasn’t having any luck, so I downloaded a key cracker. I know that this is risky business. It wasn’t a cracker but a trojan horse. Fuckers.

To make matters worse my Antivirus engine (but not the definitions) is a couple of years old. It was one that I had a license from my last job. It wasn’t picking this thing up. I went to antivirus.com and used Trend Micro’s House Call to do an online scan. It was seeing the buggers.

I wasted no time downloading Trend Micro’s Antivirus software and installing it. It was able to get a bunch of the bastards, but some of them couldn’t be deleted. I booted into recovery console and got rid of them, but when I rebooted there were new ones. It went back and forth like this until I was able to find where it had changed the registry and hack it out.

At least I think I have.

And I haven’t so much as read a comic book this weekend.

I do hate January. I hate the short, cold gray days. I hate that everything is dead. It’s a stupid time of year. One of these years, I’m gonna say, fuck it and move somewhere that is warm and bright. Florida, Arizona, Somewhere.

I get depressed. I don’t want to, but it seems to be out of my control. I’m sure this has to do with the general deadness of everything. And the lack of sunlight. Every year, I struggle through it.

On the bright side. I have a new toy.

After two and a half years and 100 plus episodes of Shitty Blog Radio, it seemed like it was time for some better equipment. It took me a few hours to get it all working, but after a good test drive tonight, I think I’ve got it.

Of course, new mic or not, Shitty Blog Radio will still suck. You can increase the sound fidelity but it won’t fix the content. You can (of course) tune in Thursdays at 10 PM EST to decide for yourself.

Work has been a drag. Budget cuts and bullshit politics have ground my project to halt. I am beginning to wonder if I am working in the right place.

So, to amuse myself, I follow the Ravens hunt for head coach and watch as the Patriots march on to history. And the good news is… by the time they get there, this god forsaken month will be over.

I’m a dork. I know it. I can’t help it.

I am sitting here in my big comfy chair, tapping this into my new phone.

I took a break to eat breakfast and I think that may be the point.

I’ve made no secret of the fact that blogging irritates me. It seems to me, that blogging should be a way to share your life with the world at large. Instead, it becomes a ritual of sharing your blog with other bloggers.

You end up, at least I did, spending your time connected to your computer doing blog things. You can’t share your life, because you don’t have one.

It may be dorky to update your blog from your phone, but at least you can do it while you are out living your life.

Last week was a long one. Not bad, but long. I can’t believe that it has been only seven days since I was at the concert.

Long hours and a hectic pace at work contributed to this. The fact that one of our ‘team members’ can’t seem to do his job, didn’t help.

I don’t know what’s up with this kid. He’s assigned to be the technician at some of the sites that I am assigned to as a Network Engineer. He won’t close calls. He seems to be paralyzed by the amount of calls out there right now. He works on calls that are more complex for days, with out elevating the call to an engineer or even asking any questions. When he does choose to ask, he sort of just tells me to do his job for him. Meanwhile, his calls keep piling up.

He doesn’t understand that there is more to his job than just knowing how to solve these issues. Unlike comparable positions at other companies, he isn’t assigned a list of calls. He pulls all the calls for his sites out of the Help Desk and addresses them as he sees fit. When things get this busy, being able to prioritize is paramount. He needs to let the complex calls sit (or elevate them) and take care of the simple calls. He should be able to close 15 to 20 calls a day. He is closing about 3 or 4 a day. Meanwhile 25 to 30 calls are coming in each day. This pace will slow down, but by the time it does, he will be in a very deep hole.

I’m not his boss, but I am ultimately responsible for these sites. If he doesn’t get caught up soon, I’ll have to go out there myself (and maybe pull resources from other sites) and bail him out. If that happens, I will have to explain to our boss why I’m out closing calls instead of working on my projects.

This just causes me stress I don’t want or need. I hate it when people don’t just do their jobs. I hate it more when it messes with my job.

One a more positive note, my niece is going to be a senior in high school this year. Her school requires that seniors arrange to have their senior portraits taken by a professional photographer on their own, instead of having one come to the school. I guess she didn’t take care of arranging this when she first found out that she was supposed to, and by the time she got around to it, the photographers were booked up.

My wife mentioned to my sister-in-law that I am capable of taking those photos. And they asked me if I could do it. Last weekend we went out to a few scenic spots and took some shots of her and a few with her boyfriend. I also shot a few traditional head and shoulder shots of her, but I don’t have access to a professional backdrop so I just shot her against a wall. I was able to use Photoshop to cut the wall away and put her in front of a background that looks very much like a pro backdrop.

I thought I did a pretty good job, but this isn’t the kind of photography I usually do, and I’m not really very good in Photoshop (I really need to take a class on it.) I began to become concerned that the photos would not be up to a professional level. I knew they looked good, but there is a reason people pay a pro.

I went to get some proofs printed so we could choose which pictures she wanted to use. When I came back to pick them up, the little girl at the store says, “I’m sorry Mr. Jeckles, we cannot print these pictures.”

I began to panic, I start to try to think of what I might have done that would have caused this problem. Did I do something wrong in Photoshop? Did I use the wrong format? I couldn’t imagine what I had done wrong.

“We can’t print pictures taken by a professional photographer without his permission.”

I smiled, thanked her and assured her that she had my permission.

I can’t think of a better compliment.

Today I had the pleasure of attending a mandatory presentation.

It was a motivational speaker. Even for motivational speakers, this guy was awful.

His dad didn’t love him when he young. That rejection stayed with him his whole life. He found that he pushed himself harder to try gain the approval of a distant and cold father. He became successful, rich and women loved him. But somehow it all seemed empty, useless like life had no meaning.

As I sat and listened, all I could think was my Dad was pretty good as far as dads go, but I’m not rich or powerful. Women tolerate me at best. And many days I feel like life has no meaning.

WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU CRYING ABOUT?!?

Almost makes me wish my dad had been distant.

He recommends that I keep a list of affirmations and read them every morning and every night. So I created a list and we will give it shot, starting right now.

I am a great fake radio DJ.
I am a good blogger.
I rule at the help desk.
I can install an OS in no time flat.
I know more about comic book characters than many people know about their own families.

Somehow I don’t feel better.

It’s probably the weather. This cold rainy shit is making me wish I was dead. I really need to move somewhere that is always summer.

He also suggested having my own personal Mission Statement. I can’t believe we paid this asshat to come talk to us.

I don’t know if I’ll have time to play the Ratdog Set before SBR tomorrow or not. I’ll post something if I’m going to do it.

I’d love to tell you all about the concert, but I don’t have it in me right now. Maybe later. It was awesome though.

This week and next are the two busiest weeks for tech support at work. And, of course, management is always trying to find ways to maximize our resources to handle the onslaught of calls we get.

This year, the grand plan is too let the engineers handle the phones, so that the support guys can all be in the field closing calls.

On paper, it’s a good plan. The reality is the support guys will, to various degrees, slack and not keep up with the pace and that some of these engineers aren’t cut out for phone support.

The number one job in phone support, at my job any how, is to address small simple problems and to create calls for larger problems and then route them to the appropriate group. I had to cover the desk for an hour (or so) on Monday and all day today. The engineers I was working with did not get it. They would try trouble shoot complex calls over the phone. I looked over at one point and saw the other engineer logged into a server checking something.

Not me. I can reset your password. I can tell you to make sure there isn’t a floppy in the a: drive when you try to boot up. I can check to see if your user has the correct rights. Anything else: “I’ll create a call for you and forward it to the right people who will help you shortly!”

These guys will help one or two users in an hour. But others will ring through to the voicemail. Users hate the voicemail.

I guess a lot of these guys think that doing this is beneath them and they don’t want to do it. Not me. I think it’s a blast. It’s easy work. I get laugh at the users. And I have fun with it. We have a bunch of seasonal help coming back right now. Many of them already have accounts, but they forget the password.

“Tech Services, this is Jeckles.”
“Uh… yeah. I think there is problem with my computer.”
“Go ahead.”
“Well. I try to login and I get an error.”
“Does the error say ‘make sure you used the correct password’ or does it say ‘I can’t find the server?’”
“It was saying check your password, but now it’s saying my account is locked.”
“Sounds like you haven’t used the correct password.”
“I think I may have forgot it.”
“Forgot it? Do you know that you are the first call for a forgotten password that I’ve had this week?”
“Really?”
“No. I’ve unlocked your account and changed your password to ‘password.’ It will prompt you to change it to something else when you login. Have a nice day!”

I’ll be on the desk all day tomorrow and three days next week. And I’ve been staying late so that I can catch up on the rest of my work. So I’m tired, but it’s okay.

If I have time on Thursday, I may broadcast the Ratdog set before SBR. Perhaps around 7:30 PM EST. If you are interested, that’s awesome. If not, who cares.

Thanks for calling the Help Desk!

We had two massive thunderstorms today. One around lunch time and the other was just a few minutes ago.

I love thunderstorms. All that power and fury shows up out of nowhere. It’s awesome.

With any luck, it will cool things down for this weekend.

Have you noticed the effort to blog daily? It won’t last. My streak will be broken by my backpacking trip tomorrow. Still, I’ll try to post on a very regular basis. Why? I don’t know. I don’t know where these compulsions ideas come from, I just try to run with them.

I should be preparing for SBR right now. Oh fucking well, it’s not like it’s a real radio show.

Okay. The show is over now, I guess I can finish this post. Like I was saying, the show isn’t very good. Listen for yourself, but don’t say I didn’t warn you. Also, there may be an tiny bit of profanity.

I really shouldn’t get so caffeinated during the show… It will be another sleepless night for me.

I’ll see you losers on Sunday.

My sinuses are still bothering me. I feel much better than I did the weekend of the blogathon, but I’m nowhere near %100. I can’t breathe. Which makes everything difficult. Especially the gym.

On the flipside, I’ve found a podcast that doesn’t suck. It’s called Podrunner and it’s an hour long mix of techo-ish music all set at a constant beat rate. It’s awesome for running or whatever.

I’ve been told that if I want Shitty Blog Radio to be successful, I have to promote it. It sounds like good advice, but I really suck at self promotion. It seems like bragging or something. Regardless, you should check out Shitty Blog Radio tomorrow night at 10 PM EST. It is the ‘Worst Show on the Internet’ or at least that’s what I’ve dubbed it. What is is mostly is some rage filled nonsense. Or something. Actually, it’s kind of hard to explain. You’d have to hear it.

Thanks to the magic of DVR I’ve seen 3 episode of Star Trek in the last 36 hours. I hadn’t watched good old original Star Trek in years. In my minds eye I had reduced it to not much more than Kirk… speaking in.. intervals that. Make. No. Sense. And paper mache sets, Red Shirted Ensigns and special two handed future punches. It, of course, has all those things, but in spite of that it’s pretty good show. It’s been fun to discover these episode all over again.

Right now I should be packing to go backpacking on Friday. I’m just throwing that out there.

This concept of a two year build up to the Presidential elections needs to be rethought. There is no reason for it. Of course, whenever I say that some asshat speaks out and says, ‘but I love this stuff.’ That’s the whole problem. I can’t help but believe that the only reason this process has spread out like this is to give CNN and FOXNews programming. That’s not a real good reason. There is no upside. It makes campaign insanely expensive driving the candidates into the waiting arms of the special interest groups. Meanwhile they all just dig up dirt about each other. This is a stupid system.

You would think that I would do something fun while I have all this time to myself. At least, you would think that if you didn’t know me. For fun, I’m broadcasting make believe radio on the internet. I suck. But I do take requests.

Other than that, I’ve just worked and watched Star Trek on DVR. I know, you’re jealous. You wanna be just like me. I’m sorry, but not everyone can handle this level of dork cool.

Oh… for the record, Expert Level on Guitar Hero II is fucking stupid hard.

I’m not a gamer. I never have been. I hear my friends talk about spending hours playing this game or another. I just can’t imagine doing that. My kid has an Xbox 360, so I get a chance to try out a game every now and then. I enjoy it for a bit, and then I’m over it. The only game that had come close to holding my interest was Madden Football.

We got Guitar Hero II yesterday. I’ve been hearing and reading about people getting all kinds of worked up about this game and it’s predecessor for some time now. And today, I can honestly say I understand what the fuss is all about. I play guitar. Not as much as when I was young. But still, I can hold my own. I can’t say that this game is just like playing, but it does capture the feel of playing. I couldn’t help but rock and bob with he rhythm as I powered out “Possum Kingdom” or “Heart Shaped Box.” I think I need to just not play it. Otherwise, you may never hear from me.

In other news, my wife took the kids and left me. I love telling people that. They look at me, think about it, decide it seems reasonable, look at me again, think that maybe I’m too calm about all of this and then ask me, Really? I tell them that they will be back in a few days.

They are going for a little more vacation at the lake. I have to work, but that’s no reason to stop them from having some fun. Besides, the kids have been restless, they need to get out and do something. I will do my best not to spend the entire time they are gone, playing Guitar Hero II.

Instead I’ll put my effort into designing an online store. It’s not for me, I have nothing to sell. My brother asked me to give him a hand, and I can’t turn down a challenge this geeky. I’ll tell you more about it, once it is set up.

Oh, and I’m sure this will shock many of you, I’m going backpacking this weekend.

Yes. You missed a block of Disco and Rage on Shitty Blogathon Radio. I know you don’t care. I don’t care that you don’t care. So there.

Mango was there. He eggs me on, you know. He tries to get me to do bad things. Very bad.

I think I have been in front of the PC too long. I mean I’m used to being in front of a computer, but this is relentless. At least I work, I get interrupted with meetings and phone calls and Shutter. All I have here is Geek Blog, Misfitopia, IM and Shitty Radio. It may be making me a bit crazy.

Mango informs me that CBS is broadcasting an XBox360 GuitarHero Championship. This is fucking retarded. Do I really need to elaborate.

Mango is going back to whatever it is that he is doing in Buffalo. So I’ll be back to being kind of alone. Again. He says he’ll be back in the middle of the night. I’ll play Enya and GnR to celebrate.

And maybe some ‘All Along the Watchtower.’

What was it that Tyler Durden said about ‘the Happy Place?’ You know… when he was giving the narrator a chemical burn?

Nevermind.

Captain America is dead.
Shot down in cold blood.

If that doesn’t make you a bit sad, then there must be something wrong with you.

And Marvel, if you think Short-Shipping Captain America #25 will create more ‘buzz,’ you are probably right. But Dammit, why? I just want to be a dutiful little comic book geek and run out collect it. But no. It’s already sold out.

Like he’ll stay dead. I remember back when Superman was dead. That didn’t last either.

I think that it is possible that I’m not really good at this blogging thing. I wonder why it took me two and half years to figure this out.

I’ve been invited to a party in Las Vegas. But I can’t afford to go. It’s just too expensive to fly out there for one weekend.

Doesn’t that just suck?

Don’t answer. That was one of those rhetorical questions.

Today alone, no less than six people reinforced my notion that most people are simply to stupid to be allowed to be left to their own devices.

Remind me to tell you what is wrong with Public Education today, but make sure you have plenty of time when you do.

Also remind me to tell you about my hiking trip from a month ago.

And it snowed. I was really ready for spring. All the signs are here. Daylight Savings is coming. The Orioles are looking good in Spring Training (they do this to more thoroughly crush our hopes in July.) And my narcissus have peaked up thruogh the mulch. Okay, they did that back in January, but you get the point.

I set up MAME on PC. All the better to enjoy Pacman and Burger Time. All I need now is a good, old-school joystick.

Do you ever wish that the Internet was harder to use, just to keep the morons out?

And lastly, I used Puppy Linux to rescue files off of a corrupted Windows Laptop. I’m like a superhero.

I was watching Star Trek yesterday.

I watch Star Trek nearly everyday.

Yesterday, it was The Next Generation variety.

The episode was Tapestry.

Any episode with Q is worth watching, but this episode is probably one of the best they ever did.

The basic idea of the episode is this:

Captain Picard finds himself dead after a phaser blast (or some such thing) makes his artificial heart fail. In the afterlife he is greeted by the apparently omnipotent Q.

Q explains that the reason Picard is a dead is because of the artificial heart, had he still had his human heart he would be alive and well.

Q gives Picard the chance to go back and do it all over again, a chance to avoid the fight with an ugly alien that resulted in him getting a new heart.

Picard suddenly finds himself back in his 20-something self. He’s a Ensign just out of the Academy, out with his best friends from the Academy for one last weekend out, before they go to their first assignments as Star Fleet Officers.

Picard relives the weekend, this time with the perspective of a middle aged, successful Star Fleet Captain. He manages to prevent the fight with the Aliens from happening, and he never gets stabbed in the heart. As a result, he never gets an artificial heart.

Q returns him to the present, and Picard finds that he isn’t Captain of the Enterprise, he is a Lieutenant in Astrophysics who spends his days running reports and analyzing data. He is relieable, but unspectacular. He will never advance beyond this post in this new present.

Q visits Picard one last time. He explains that by avoiding that fight, the young Picard never found his life in danger, never decided to live for the now, never learned to take chances.

Or more simply put, his past, especailly the parts of it that he wasn’t proud of, were intregral to making him into the man that he became.

Q sends him back to his younger self again, this time Picard allows himself to be drawn into the fight, knowing full well that is could cost him his life in the present. Death, he decides, would be preferable to surviving as a man that is a pale imitation of his self.

This episode is great.

I have so many regrets about my past, and watching this episode always reminds me, that what I’ve experienced— good and bad— has made me who I am.

I still have room for improvement. (Lots of room.) But the place for improvement is right here and now, not in wishing that this or that had gone differently.

I have a plan.

I’ve had a ‘home network’ for a while now. But it isn’t much of a network. Mostly a few PC’s and a couple of wireless laptops connected the internet. Throw in a few network printers for good measure and you get the picture.

This doesn’t really cut it for the geek in me. And to tell you the truth, it’s not really working as well as it should for the rest of us either. What we need here is a real network. Luckily, I know I network engineer. (It’s me. Really. I don’t need to find any one else.)

What I have is one P4 Desktop, 3 P3 Desktops, 2 laptops and one 200GB external drive . The plan is this. Take one P3 and make it a w2k3 Server and attach the external drive to it. One of the other P3s is already set up to be a VM Server. I will add a Ubuntu LAMP Server VM and a Windows XP VM. THe final P3 will be set up with EDUbuntu for the kids. My P4 desktop will be formated and I’ll install Kubuntu on it. The laptops are already good to go.

I’ll share out some folders from the external drive. The Printers too.

And then I’ll be set. I’ll be able to work from either my desktop or my laptop equally, my wife will be able to access my MP3’s and I’ll have the XP VM to fall back on if I find something that just needs windows (or the kids do.) I’ll use the LAMP server to work on some PHP/MySQL databases. You know for all that important data I have. Seriously, I see full relational databases in the future for my comic book collection and my movie library.

Why? Cause I’m a geek that’s why.

I’ll bore you with updates as they are available.

I’m in a shitty mood this morning. Of course, it is almost afternoon. This isn’t helping my mood out at all. But none of that matters.

From inside my skull:

I’ve been looking a bit at the new Vista OS. It’s pretty good, of course it ought to be after 5 years or so of development. I have been planning to make some changes to my ’supercomputer.’ Initially, I was thinking of putting some flavor of Ubuntu on it, but now I’m considering Vista. Linux or Vista? There are good reasons for both. I love the whole Open Source thing and the implied geekiness that goes with Linux, but Vista is new and shiny. Plus, sooner or later I’ll be supporting Vista at work, the more familiar I am with the better off I’ll be. At the moment, I’m totally undecided.

I can’t help thinking that we haven’t seen the worst of this Iraqi sitiuation yet.

There are all kinds of playoff implications in todays games. Not only in the NFL but in my Fantasy Football League. So in addition to the Ravens, I’ll be rooting for LT, Jerricho Cotchery and Eli Manning.

Monday Night Football presents me with a unique dilemma Assuming the Ravens win today. If Indy wins, the Ravens clinch the AFC North. If Cincy wins we clinch the Playoffs but not the AFCN. However we will move into Second Place in the overall standings in the AFC. I think I’ll just go with my gut here and root against Cincinattica.

I really need to go backpacking. This mild weather has only made this fact more obvious to me. Spring cannot get here fast enough.

The middle of next week will mark the shortest day of the year. I look forward to it, only so I can start seeing the days get longer again. All this darkness puts a hurting on my psyche.

I hurt my foot while running the other week. Nothing serious, but it does hurt when i put my weight on it. I kept running each day, hoping that it would work itself out. It did not. I believe that my sneakers were the culprit. So I switched shoes, but the pain is still there. And there is nothing more pathetic than seeing a middle aged guy hobbling along in a half run-half limp on the treadmill. I bought some new running shoes this weekend, which in the long run should help. My problem is what to do about the short term. I don’t run on the weekends, so it has had a chance to heal some, but if it still hurts tomorrow, I’ll have to make some choices. Either I just take a week off, I use the Elliptical Machines for a week (which will put less strain on my foot, but causes my knees problems,) or I just keep running. None of those are great options.

Every time I hear about Hilary Clinton getting ready to run for President, it makes me happy. Not for any particular reason, it just feels like a good thing.

I am sick of work. Luckily I’ll get the last week of the year off. Hopefully, I can come back re-charged.

Work. Gym. Sleep.

Sometime it feels like that’s all there is.

I hate the short days and long nights. I hate the gray skies. Even this recent wave of warm weather can’t fix that.

The answer, for me anyhow, is to escape, just a little, every now or then. I have a few avenues for escape. Music is one. My comic books are another.

Of course, any time I try to talk to any one about comic books they roll their eyes at me. I guess grown ups aren’t supposed to read comic books.

But they are a perfect little escape for me. I have a stack of comic books I haven’t read yet. Every day on my lunch break, I read one or two and I read a couple before I go to sleep.

These books let me wonder if Iron Man or Captain America will come out on top in their War. You didn’t even know that there was a war, did you? Will Charles Xavier ever regain his powers? Who is X-23?

Better to think about those things, than to be bogged down by a job that honestly isn’t going anywhere.

Besides Batman, Wolverine, Marvel Girl and the rest are badass.

Is privacy important?

The nature of this question keeps changing. Should we sacrifice a little privacy to make the world safer? To make it more convenient?

It seems that this question is no longer academic for me.

At work we got a new piece of equipment. A network analyzer to go with our firewall. Our Network Analyst, who is responsible for the firewall has been testing it out.

It seems that there is very little information that is hidden from him.

Oh. I know the information has always been there, for anyone with the right tools and enough time. But this has raised the stakes. He can read in near real time what you are saying on IM or what web page your are reading. Who you are logged in as.

If he were inclined, he could know just about anything I did on line, with no more effort than you are expending to read this blog.

He let our Network Engineers know about the capabilities of this device by reading verbatim an IM conversation between to of them.

The reaction in the room was unanimous: Fuck this.

Like I said, we know that nothing is safe or secret in the electronic world. We know that better than most people. We also know the pure volume of stuff happening on the network at any given moment should mean that whatever we do is just part of the noise.

Not anymore.

Of course, the argument always goes— if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear.

Like most old arguments, it’s dead wrong.

Typical Chat conversation:

jeckles:dude
shutter:what’s up!
jeckles:that meeting was lame!
shutter:oh yeah?
jeckles:fuck yeah. you should have heard the dumbass shit that so and so was saying.
shutter:hahahhaha. I know so and so is such a tool… why do they invite him to those meetings
jeckles:to make me nuts, I think

Harmless. Just a little venting between co-workers. I’m sure it happens all the time. But what if ’so and so’ got access to the logs of the analyzer? Yeah. That would be bad.

And even if I refrained from criticizing or insulting anyone on IM, would it still be OK?

No.

Imagine if your boss offered you overtime to work on a project. You declined because you had plans for the weekend. You don’t tell your boss that your plans are to watch all 12 hours of LotR, its none of her business. But when you tell your buddy about your plans and she sees the logs…

What if some one was planning to quit? That’s not illegal or immoral, yet you wouldn’t want anyone at work to no about it before you told them.

The scenarios are endless. The fact remains that recording personal conversations is wrong. It’s probably legal, but what’s legal and what’s right often don’t line up.

There is a need to monitor what happens on a network and to control the kinds of traffic that is on the network. But there has to be a way to do it without spying on your own employees. I’d rather have IM blocked than monitored.

So what happened at work?

We downloaded and install a tool to encrypt our IM. Our Network Analysts blocked our IM. Our CIO said, “You guys can encrypt it? Send me the link.” Our Analyst backed off.

But this isn’t going to go away.

What should you take out of this? Two things.

Protect your privacy. If you think you have nothing to hide, you underestimate the ill will people can possess.

And if you IM me while I’m at work, assume what ever you type is being read. Cause it probably is.

Actually, no one asked.

But I don’t care. I’ll tell you anyway.

Remember that Laptop I was working with? Dell was kind enough to send me a new (or at least new to me) CD/DVD drive as well as a hard drive. And to my surprise, they worked great. Before long I had Kubuntu 6.10 Edgy Eft installed and everything is looking peachy.

I was pleased to see that the wireless adapter was recognized by the OS. I started trying to connect to my wireless network, but there were no options for WPA security. This was no good. I did a little research and found that WPA security isn’t available in the base install of Kubuntu.

I installed and configured Knetworkmanger and tried that. And it looked like it would work. But as it attempted to connect to my network, it hung at 28% and got no further. I tried a number of other things, but the results remained the same until I manage to change enough settings and the networking completely. I got frustrated and walked away.

But I don’t give up that easy. I reinstalled Kubuntu and and began looking around again. It occurred to me that I never actually connected to any network with the wireless card. I turned the security off and tried to connect to the wireless network. Still no dice.

More research. Perhaps the firmware to the wireless wasn’t installed correctly. I found some steps to correct that and followed them. I tried to connect. Success.

I reconfigured the security and tried again.

No dice. It took me a few minutes to consider it, but it came to me that I keep my SSID hidden. I enabled SSID broadcast and tried again. It connected like a champ.

As a matter of fact, I sit here now in front of the TV (Watching The Search for Spock) connected in just that fashion.

I’m sure no one is as impressed with me as I am, but then again, I don’t care about that either.

Did I tell you about my wife’s laptop? I bet I haven’t.

The spot in which you plug the power supply into became loose and as a result, the battery could not get charged.

I get online and chatted with Dell Support, I find that chatting in less frustrating than speaking on the phone with them. e established that she probably needed a new system board, that the laptop was out of warranty and that a new system board would cost 800 bucks.

My wife needs a laptop to do her job. It didn’t take much to justify buying a new one instead of shelling out that kind of money on parts.

This left this laptop in my house, that had nothing wrong with it except that it couldn’t draw power. I decided that I could fix it. And since no one was counting on using it now, there was no problem if I screwed it all up. It looked like I could just re-solder the power jack. And I was ready to do just that until we got a letter in the mail.

The letter said that we members of a class that had secured a victory from Dell for this very problem. In light of this law suit, Dell was very willing to replace the system board at no cost to us. We sent the laptop off and in a week or so it came back.

It sat for a few weeks while I was busy with other things. This week I decided that I was ready to mess with it. I wanted to install Kubuntu on it. I put the install CD in and turned the laptop on and… nothing happened. It seems that the CD Drive no longer worked.

Once again I chatted with Dell. He had me run Dell Diagnostics on the laptop. The diagnostics said the Hard Drive was failing, but the CD Drive was fine. Go figure. He said he would send me a new CD/DVD drive and a new hard drive. The sad thing part is that I don’t think there is anything wrong with the CD/DVD drive. I think it’s the system board. But there is no arguing. I’ll get the new parts, install them and if when the new CD/DVD drive also doesn’t work, I’ll chat with them again.

I can’t complain, I’m getting a lot of service for free on a laptop that was out of warranty.

It’s true, I am a big dork.

Yesterday I set up a VM Server. That is to say, a server that holds a number of Virtual Machines. Wait, you probably don’t know what a virtual machine is. For starters, the cool geek acronym is VM. A VM is a fully functional computer that installed, well, virtually. The entire computer is contained within a single file on another computer. It is very cool technology and it getting too be very popular in industry.

The coolest thing about my VM Server is that it is completely free technology.

I installed a base install of Ubuntu Server on P4 2.8 GHz with 512 MB RAM . And then I installed the new free VMServer product from VMware. Once that was installed , I installed the VMware Server Console on my regular PC. This allowed me to create a few VMs on the VM Server. I started with a Windows 2003 Server install. It works well, if a bit slow. I was hoping to attach my external hard drive to the VMServer and have the W2k3 Server operate it as a Shared Drive, or actually a few different shared drives. But I had some issues with the VM consistently seeing the USB Drive. Having shared drives that aren’t always there is no good, so I put the external drive back on my main PC.

I also installed a LAMP Server in a second VM. This is a Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP Server. Basically, your standard open source web server. Next up will be a Vista VM. Although I expect that to be terribly slow.

I guess this whole project is kind of a proof of concept thing for me. To really do this right, I would need to max out the RAM and put a 300 GB Hard Drive in.

Like I said, I’m a dork. Nice way to spend most of a Saturday.

At least, later I went out and bought a few comic books.

It’s that time of year again.

It is the time of year that I spend crazy hours at work and do little else.

I’m not complaining. I honestly don’t mind.

Most of the time my department is pretty laid back. Almost too laid back. It’s fun to work in an environment with a little intensity. At least for a little bit.

And besides, they pay me overtime. So bring it on. I can take it. Work me as hard as you want. I’ll be laughing all the way to the bank.

The down side is I won’t have as much time to play on the internet. I’m already pretty much an absentee landlord of my stupid little club. Now I’ll be practically invisible. Who cares, it’s a shitty little club any way.

My stupid Internet Radio Show will suffer also. I mean who wants to tune in to hear some freak bitching about how stupid people are? Come to think of it, maybe the show won’t change that much.

I went backpacking weekend before last and I went to lake with my neices and nephew last weekend. So I’m pretty relaxed. I’m ready to be busy. Today I’m setting 20-some-odd High Powered CAD workstations. Woo-Hoo. In case you can’t read the Sarcasm, it’s not very exciting. But at least I brought my iPod with me.

I spent last weekend installing Linux, Xubuntu to be precise, on my test box. I got it running and have been using it since then. I like it.

But I guess that wasn’t enough.

Tonight I Installed the Windows Vista Beta on a Virtual Machine on my Regular Computer.

So now at my finger tips I can work with Xubuntu, XP or Vista.
I’m such a dork.

Vista is going to take some getting used to.
It is different. Very different.

I’d like to be relatively fluent with it long before it is released.

Maybe I am doing all this geekery because I am avoiding making this database I am supposed to be designing.

Writing and designing the web app excites me and I can’t wait to do it. But first I need to design the data model. And that is as exciting as… well it isn’t exciting at all.

Just a week and a half till I go back packing. I think I’m ready. Very ready.

I can’t beleive that the Blogathon was only a week ago.
It seems much longer ago.

I’m a dork.
But you knew that.

I took my ‘extra’ computer and installed Linux on it.
The PC is a 500 MHz Dell with 384 MB RAM. It isn’t exactly a speed demon but it is stable, with decent hardware.

I’ve been monkeying around with Ubuntu/Kubuntu. Well, mostly Kubuntu because Gnome plucks me for some reason. But KDE is a resource pig. I stumbled on to Xubuntu. It is another flavor of Ubuntu but it comes packaged with XFCE as its Windows Manger. So far so good. But then again, I haven’t done anything but set up my IM and start typing this. Of course, that is most of what I do.

As if that wasn’t enough, I installed VMware Server on my main computer. I set up a VM with Kubuntu but I over tweaked it and had to punt. I’ll try again later.

I’d also like to set up a Windows Vista VM. But its seems that I missed my chance to download the Beta. I’ll see if I can’t find some other source to get the Beta from, but don’t tell Big Bill.

My goal here, I guess, is to use Linux for all of my Internet-ing. I have some apps that require Windows, but most of what I do is … well it’s this. We’ll try it for one month. If I am still liking it when the month is up, I’ll investigate Migrating everything I do (at home) to Linux.

This is the first time I’ve made that threat. Something has always come up to piss me off and make switch back. But its been a year or so since I tried, so I’ll give it a shot again.

Just skip this post.
It is boring and unnecessary.

It is never good to brag, to toot your own horn, but this is my blog and I can’t think of a better place for it.
I’ve been biting my tongue and being humble at work.

No one will care or understand.
Geek nerd talk follows, with little explanation or clarification:

We are going to Migrate from Netware E-dir to Active Directories. Since I am supposed to be an expert with the MCSE and all I’ve been working in the planning meeting with the consultants. It’s been fun.

I was discussing a naming convention for security groups with a colleague, when it occurred to me that we could assign permissions to Domain Local Groups and then be able to ‘effectively assign rights’ to Domain Global Groups by adding them to the Domain Local Groups.

We went back to the consultants and floated the idea to them. At first they were like you don’t need Local Domain Groups, this is a Single Forest Single Domain Model. But as I explained that we could use it to ease administration, they understood where I was going, and totally endorsed the idea.

</ geek nerd talk>

The point being, I had an original and smart thought today that will become the way we do our jobs someday.

That doesn’t happen every day. At least not to me.

It’s Monday.

I still have to be at work. I still have to deal with … well everything I had to before.

This blogathon may have made a difference. But life still goes on, pretty much as it did before.

I did get some sleep, but I’m still a bit out of it.

I find my self feeling bogged down.
I have so many projects I’m working on.
Not at work, but my projects.

My home has some Home Improvement needs.

I’m in the process of setting up a few Web Sites.
Two of them are for me.
One of them is for a Business.
I’m not really qualified to call my self a Web Designer, and I’m certainly not a DBA, but that is what I seem to be getting my self into.
I won’t get paid for any of it. I’m looking at like this… If I can get this up and running with no major incidents, I’ll have the clout (and the code snippets) to sell a similar Web App to some one else.

My Blog To Do list keeps growing.

I’ve set up a Linux box (again.) Already I’m plucked with it. For some reason the cursor/mouse never feels like its moving correctly for me in Linux. It makes me nuts.

I want to record a few more Techno things for the Show.

In addition to this blog I have 3 writing projects that I am not working on.

I have a few thousand photographs that need to cleaned up and organized ans something done with them.

You know plus life.
I feel like I don’t have enough time for any of it.

Focus. Focus. Focus.

I collect comic books.

I guess I could just announce: I am a big dork!

I get a few titles; Batman and Robin, X-Men, a few others.
I love it.

When I was younger, I could never afford to keep up with it.
I’d collect for a month or two, but them I’d run out of money and stop.

Something about the way they are put together is perfect.
One picture.
A touch of dialog.
Repeat.

I don’t seem to be able to put into works the simple elegance of it.

I think that I haven’t read the most recent X-men yet.
That will be my treat.
Tomorrow I’ll just relax and read that.

That’s what I do.
I save them.
I don’t read them right away.
When I’m in the mood, I pull out an unread one and read it.

I guess comics are supposed to be kid stuff.

It must be my inner child that likes them.
Funny, I thought I killed my inner child.

I will not be reduced to being grumpy.
I will not.

But they are testing me. They really are.

So, I will focus on some of the positives.

I just got Batman and Robin, the Boy Wonder yesterday. I had to order it off eBay. It was worth the wait.

I also managed to drag myself to the gym yesterday.
Going to the gym is a chore. You know the drill. You’re too tired. Too busy. Whatever. So you don’t go. Add to that the fact that my knee has been a mess. So the few times I have managed to go, it swells up and I can’t go back.

But I went. I got on the treadmill and ran. For 30 minutes. Which got me about 3 miles. and my knee… is OK. now all I have to do is go back tonight.

I am working on making a Web App for a Realty Team. The project is way over my head. I’m a network engineer not a developer, but I can’t turn down a challenge.

And YOU GUYS… yes YOU GUYS have blown my mind. When I signed up for blogathon and I was afraid I wouldn’t get 20 dollars in pledges. But no, YOU GUYS rocked my world and and have pledged nearly $300. I hope you realize what a reflection that is on YOU GUYS. There are blogs in this blogathon with more reader that have less pledges. That is because YOU GUYS rock! I cannot thank you enough.

If you want to blow my mind, Sponsor Me!

See. Things are pretty good. I just need to tune out these idiots.

Sometimes my job is just boring.
Now would be a prime example.

Avert your eyes… geek talk follows.

One of the software packages my users use has a proprietary database that stores all sorts of multimedia files. It doesn’t take much to make it get errors. It needs to have maintenance done a regular basis. (I’d explain database maintenance, but none of you care. None of you.)

Last week some idiot, (that bastard that screamed at me the other week, actually,) ran a server utility on the sever while the users were using this package. Ever since their software hasn’t run correctly. I told them to run maintenance.

They say they did but the problem persists.

So here I am running maintenance, which amounts to clicking next and waiting.

And waiting.
And waiting.

One of the tables seems to be FUBAR. Because the database is proprietary, there is nothing I can do but wait to see if the maintenance utility can fix it. If it can’t… well lets not think about that yet.

The point is, I have nothing to do but sit here. And wait. At least I have my iPod to amuse me.

I am bored. And hungry too.
I think I have many days of hungry in my future.
Damn. Now I’m think about food. This isn’t working well at all.

Bored and hungry. This no way to spend the day.

I’ve had a whole day to recover, but I’m still useless. We’ll just blame this stuffiness in my head.

I coasted through work today. Asshole tried talk to me again. I put on my iPod. He kept talking. Some people are very dense.

I was hoping to air out my tent in the sun yesterday. Of course, the sun doesn’t seem to shine anymore. If I waited for the sun I’d have nothing but mildew for a tent.

What is that?

It is a tent in my kitchen, of course.

Luckily, no one around here likes to cook anyway.

I solved a mystery, I’ve been working on for a while. It feels good. (Don’t ask… it doesn’t make any sense… I promise.)

I found a new comic book. It has been out for a few months, but I’m a bit slow. Batman and Robin, the Boy Wonder. I was thinking that I should pick up a Batman title, and when I saw that Frank Miller was back to writing Batman, my decision was made. I’ve read Issue 1, I loved it. Some people have panned it for being ‘over the top’ in both dialogs and artwork. Well Duh. It’s Batman. I loved it. I need to find #2, my comic book store can’t seem to lay hands on it, and I’m not quite willing to pay 10 backs for it on eBay (once you figure in the shipping.) Who knows, maybe I’ll have a weak moment.

I am trying to write the account of my hike last weekend, but my brain dead-ness is hampering the effort, I apologize for any inconvenience.

Now it’s off to sleep.

Work sucks. But at least no one has yelled at me today.
I am supposed to set up some computers. They are moving them from somewhere else. And they keep not getting them moved. So I wait.

And wait.

I think I need to go backpacking. Conveniently, I’m going this Friday.

If I make it that long.
I just don’t think that I am cut out for working.

I did mange to teach myself some PHP in my spare time. I have figured out database calls and incorporated SQL statements in to the code. I also figured out encryption and authentication.

Now I just need to decide if I want to bother to set up classes (Object Oriented PHP) or just leave the code all spaghetti-like. It’s not like I’m being graded on this. But I do want it done right. Me and my stupid projects.

With any luck I’ll get this site up and running by the end of the month. What site, you ask. That is a secret. A surprise even. If I ever get it fnished… I’ll tell you about it. Probably.

I guess I’ll go back to waiting now.

Jeckles, the voices in my head say, you claim you’re a geek but all you talk about is backpacking and politics. To satisfy the voices, I offer the following:

Let the geek talk begin. I have had to clean up a lot of spyware over the last two years, at work, at friend’s and family’s homes, even a little bit at home. The tried and true tools I have used are AdAware and Spybot S&D. As insidious as the spyware is, it seems to require both of these tools to clean it all up. The good news is that they are free. The bad news is that, recently, they seem to be unable to get some of the newer malware that is out there. There are anti-spyware software packages you can pay for, but personally I won’t sink any money into them while I can still get the free tools to do the job.

I had heard that Microsoft was releasing an anti-spyware tool. It is in beta right now (and it’s free) so I thought I should check it out. It irked me from the get go, because Microsoft want to make sure that I had a valid version of Windows installed before it let me download it. That really ticks me off. My version is valid. That is not the problem. Get ready for the mini-rant. The problem is the notion of providing support and patches only for valid versions. I am sorry that people steal Microsoft’s products, but that is no excuse to allow those pirated versions to become little cess pools of viruses, spyware, and zombie spammers. The existence of those kinds of boxes will only diminish the security of all the valid Windows installations out there. Mini-rant done, sorry.

Otherwise the tool worked fairly well. It sound some residual files from spyware I had previously cleaned off the test machine. My only complaint is that it categorized VNC as a threat. VNC could bee used maliciously, but is mostly used as a tool by admin types like me. The interface was smooth and friendly. It has a seamless autoupdate feature that is great. Plus it also includes some useful system tools like, a Privacy Tool that let’s you get rid of various temporary files and a System Explorer that gives lots of useful info about what is on your PC. The real test will come when I have an infected machine to work with. For now, I’m keeping it in my anti-spyware “toolkit,” and hoping that it improves as it goes through the beta process.

We all know that Groundhog’s day was once the celebration of some rodent in rural Pennsylvania. Everyone sing it together: The Pennsylvania Polka! We also know that now in the dawning of the 21st Century that the whole rodent thing is a bit too quaint. Groundhog’s Day now symbolizes the existentialist dilemma of having to live the same day over and over again. Put your hand in mine … I hope you enjoyed your day today, because you just might have to live it again tomorrow.

I hope that is not the case for me. Once was quite enough, thanks anyway.

Yes, I went to the interview. I did well, I think. Now I wait and wait and wait.

Enough to make a person crazy.

In an attempt to keep my mind off of all of it; I am installing Gentoo Linux in one of my computers. I had planned to do this a while ago, but as these things go, I got sidetracked. Anyway it is going well. I’m doing the install the most manual way possible, what good is a distraction that is quick and easy. I’ll keep you posted. Yes, I know the blogosphere is holding its collective breath to see how I’m doing with yet another Linux distro.

I haven’t really written about it.  It seems so trivial.  But it has been what I’ve been spending most of my free time on.  (Keep in mind that I don’t have too much free time.)

What am I talking about?  —and how many times do I hear that question in one day.

But what am I talking about.

Mango Radio.

Specifically, my little shitty show on Mango Radio.

If there was any question, and I don’t think that there was, I’m a geek.  What spells geek more than saying, “Yea… I have a radio show on the internet.”

I’m such a dork.

But I like my little show.  It’s not for everyone.  I mean you mom.  (I might, accidentally, use a few words that have four letters and start with F, S or D.) But it’s not too bad.  I talk about a bunch of nonsense and play some music I like.  It reminds me of college.  My Friends and I would sit around and talk about this and that and everything.  And play music.  We would each try to add some music to the mix that was uniquely ours.

This is a little like that.

SBR is one of the only places you’re like to hear Syd Barret or the Bee Gees.  It’s gotta be the only place you’ll hear both.  In the same show.  Not everything is obscure.  Not everything is good either.  But I like it all.  The most recent show featured music from Wheatus, Sneaker Pimps, Kate Bush, Enigma and 3 Doors Down (amongst others.)

In between songs I ramble about this and that.  Some of it makes sense.  Some of it only makes sense to people who are members of this shitty little club.  Some of it only makes sense to me.  And some of it, I don’t even know what I’m talking about.

I did the first show, mostly to see if I could figure out the software I use to record it.  I figured I would record it, give it to Mango and be done with it.  It would give me something to play with and it would give Mango something to launch his station with.

But I kind of enjoyed recording it, and more importantly I knew I could do better.  So I did another.  And Another.  Now it’s gathered it own popularity.  I don’t think that too many people listen… but more listen to that than read this blog.  (Of course if I spent more time updating this blog and less time recording my show maybe I would have more readers.)

I wasn’t going to mention it here.  I like to think of this as a relatively serious site.  Not that all the content is serious, but I don’t clutter it with memes, surveys and other nonsense.  And this seems a bit like nonsense.  But this site is also mostly about me.  And this nonsense has taken up a lot of my time and energy, so it seems worth writing about.

Shitty Blog Radio isn’t for everyone but if you’re curious, check it out.  You can hear it live on Internet Radio on Thursdays.  Go hear for more info.  Or you can subscribe to it as a podcast.

Or you can ignore it. Either way is good.

Where does the time go? Well…

I am still working on getting the rest of the A Week in the Woods, Volume Three story together. Combine that with another writing project and a web-app/database I am trying to put together for a friend, it seems I don’t have enough non-work “computer time” to take care of all of these projects. But I won’t let that stop me.

My son is off to Boy Scout camp. I’m jealous. I remember some real fun times at Scout Camp. When he gets back we’ll be off for some family camping. I’m really looking forward to that, the kids are getting old enough that they can really appreciate it.

I’m in the middle of a huge rollout of new computers at work. We have contracted an outside company to take care of it, but the whole things still has to be managed, plus everything else I do, still needs to be done.

Oh, and I cleaned out my basement. Now I just need to do something with the rest of the house. And the yard. I have so many home improvement projects I’m putting off that HGTV should run a show on the projects the Geek should be doing. Like While You Were Out, but on a smaller and less interesting scale. Paint. Mow. Spray for crabgrass. Paint. Build Shed. And on and on.

On a completely unrelated note, I picked up a cheapo mp3 player. It is no iPod, but at least it gives something to listen to while I’m running. Which I’ve been trying to do in the morning before work.

That’s your quick update of the Jeckles Geek world. I’ll try to get the backpacking story done and maybe another post or two up before I’m off in the woods again.

I finally got of my lazy ass and did it. Got my other computer running Linux. I tried to get Slackware, debian and Gentoo running. A variety of different problems kept that from working for me. So, I went back to what I knew worked. Red Hat 9. Kind of feels like Linux for dummies, but if the shoe fits…

I got it installed. Downloaded Firefox. And I’m ready to roll. Need to get gaim set up to take all of the different IMs. Otherwise I should be set. I get this urge every couple of months, to say to hell with Windows. I’m going all Linux. Why? Cause I’ll never really learn it otherwise. I mean I can function in Linux. Better than most I suppose, but I’m still an amateur. My inner geek screams, Windows is for the computer illiterate. Linux is the way. Your missing the boat son. And I scramble to comply. I am a geek. I want to be able to tune my own kernel. I want to compile packages and update depenancies. I want to know what is going on with my computer, not have some wizard say please wait while I sit back and wait. Assuming that some sort of magic is happening.

So why am I still running Windows? Two reasons. First of all, I support Windows at work. I can’t forget how it works. But more importantly, I have a very nice computer, I don’t want to screw it up. So I don’t go experimenting on it. As a result Linux get installed on some lesser computer and sooner or later I get sick of all the waiting and slowness. What’s going to be different this time? Maybe nothing. Or maybe I’ll be able to get this test installation to take care of my basic needs. Internet, email, IM and Music. Then I’ll ghost the current Windows environment on my Good computer (just in case) and then I’ll put Linux on there.

But just so you know, this post was composed in its entirety on Linux.

Here I sit, listening to XM Radio. Online! They jacked up the monthly rate but threw in the online bit. Not a bad trade off if you ask me. It’s not Mango Radio or anything but it’s pretty cool.

We started to set up SUS Server at work yesterday. And I am more or less in charge of this venture because I have actually set it up before. It did not go too smoothly. When we went to launch the admin tool, which is web based, we get a 401 you don’t have permission to display this page error. Fun. It seems like I screwed up the setup of IIS 6, but I haven’t figured out where I went wrong — Yet.

Baseball is about to start. And I am excited. This is the only time of year to be excited if you are an Orioles fan. By June, all the excitement will be out of it. Daylight Savings Time is set to begin. All of this points to spring. And spring means … backpacking of course. I need to plan a trip soon.

I’m still mulling over the Dish Network thing. I hadn’t done before because the HD equipment was too expensive, but now they are giving the base HD receiver for free. It might just be time.

It’s another rainy weekend, so I will probably post again soon.

No. Really I did. At work today.

Towards the end of the day, I was getting ready to head out. Most of the office was gone. I stopped in to say something to one of the network engineers. He was sitting in front of his computer staring at the monitor. Next to him was the other senior engineer, staring along with him. Not a good sign. They were looking at the console of the webfilter that plugs works with our antivirus solution. Apparently the updates weren’t working. And they were attempting to update it manually. They downloaded the files and tried this and that, but it would not accept the files.

I watched what they were doing and tried to compare it in my mind to what i had done with our antivirus at my old job. They were different solutions but I kept looking and thinking. Finally, I said, why not do this? They were out of ideas, so they tried it. It processed the files and said it was updated. Not bad for the new guy.

I’m thinking of ditching cable and going with Dish Network. If anyone has any experience with them, let me know. Thanks.

Yes it is beginning to be spring. I have cleaned the grill. I have been cooking dinner on it. I love this time of year. I hate winter. It is so dreary. Now it is warming up. The sun is shining more. Soon, it will be time for mowing the lawn and taking care of the garden. The Orioles and playing catch with the boys. And, of course, backpacking. I have a five day weekend coming up, so I am hoping that I can twist my brother’s arm and get him (and the dog) to go on a 2 day trip with me.

I had a killer day at work today. I have been in “training” for the last few weeks. Today was my first day “on my own.” I was able to close out several calls. One of them was very tricky. I could bore you with the details, but I like you. It had to do with the fact that computer would not boot with a USB printer installed and turned on. I found, in the CMOS settings, a “no boot” option for USB devices. Problem solved. Oops, did I just bore you with the details? Maybe I don’t like you as much as I thought.

Anyway, I love solving a problem. It was good to be out there working. I also went to the gym today, for the first time since January. Changing jobs and everything threw my schedule off and it doesn’t take much of an excuse for me to not go to the gym. It wasn’t too bad. I do feel it though. It will take a week or two of going to get back into the swing of it.

New job, good weather, a good workout. My mood is pretty good right now.

Work sucked today. Don’t get me wrong, I still love the job but that doesn’t mean every day will be great. It is a job and some days just suck. Like today. Not that anyone cares about my bad day at work, but too bad. That is the topic of today’s post.

On Tuesday, one of the Novell Servers crashed. Some moron was working on the HVAC in the server room and left the A/C off for too long. The server had a meltdown. This had no direct effect on me, but did cause some excitement around the place. They were able to bring the server back up but the RAID array would not except one of the drives. With the server running in degraded mode, the decision was made to migrate everything to a new server. (Apparently, they were planning on doing this at some point in the future anyhow, but not all the engineers thought that migrating in the middle of a crisis was a good idea.)

They worked overnight, Tuesday and Wednesday to get most everything migrated. Considering the that this was the server that everyone in the main office logs into and has their home directory on, it was pretty transparent to the users. The hang up was the printers. The way the printers were set up, they were going to need to be redirected to the new server and then reinstalled on every workstation. I’m not sure how may workstations that is, but it is not a small number. So today, your fearless geek, spent the day reinstalling printers. All day long. Actually, there were about 5 of us and 2 interns (although, I’m not convinced that the interns actually moved the process forward) We got the first floor done today. Tomorrow floors 2 and 3.

Not only was it tedious work, but the tech who was spearheading this effort was doing nothing to keep it organized. I (and a few others) tried to make suggestions about how this might be done in an orderly fashion but he wasn’t hearing it. So there were techs and interns milling around saying things like, “Did you get this one?” “No, but Bob might have check with him” “Where are the interns?” I am sure that the users were not impressed with this display. I couldn’t handle it. I found some smaller offices where no one else was and just knocked them out. Hopefully, I’ll be able to do the same tomorrow.

So for now you can just call me Super Monkey Printer Boy. Hopefully on Monday, I can be a Support Tech again.

Mango is making a magazine, well a Mangozine. Its all very silly, actually. The whole thing is a satirical response to blogging! magazine which is a stupid idea. Why people would want to pay for a magazine filled with content that is freely available on the web is beyond me. Anyhow, Mango asked my to contribute to his Mangozine and I did. So go on over and check it out. It’s OK this one is free!

These Random Thoughts posts are so not popular, I was tempted to abandon them. But, I won’t my blog, my thoughts, though shit. Without further ado:

The US has pulled its ambassador from Syria and is demanding that Syria withdraw from Lebanon. Not a good sign. Memo to the Bush Administration— NO starting new wars till you finish the ones you have now! And to think we thought Iran would be next. Well don’t rule that out either. Or better yet let’s take them both on. In the regrettable words of our President, “Bring ‘em On!” I think anyone who has read this far knows that I am opposed to war in general. But what I’m talking about here is common sense. We can only engage so many “evil-doers” at one time. Don’t think that Iran and Syria are unaware of this. North Korea knows it too. That’s why these countries are getting bolder. Are strategy of bold talk and unilateral action doesn’t seem to be worrying these folk. We need a new plan. Dr. Rice we are waiting.

And Please can we just shut up about Jose Canseco. Yes, he did steroids. Yes, he knows about others that did. But he hasn’t named any names that are truly shocking. This is not news. This is an attempt by a messed-up individual to cash in. Spring training is starting, can’t we hear about the normal drivel … Can A-Rod step for the Yankees, Can Boston do it again, Will the O’s ever get any pitching?

The NHL, meanwhile, is enjoying more coverage about the pending cancellation of their season than they had all of last season.

I’ve been using the Microsoft Anti-Spyware Tool Beta 1 for a few days now, and Monday it got its first real test. I was looking to download some cracked free password recovery software (stop looking at me like that, a user forgot the password she put on an Excel document. Really. It’s true, I swear) and well let’s just say I got infected pretty good with some spyware. It tried to stop the stuff from installing, but it was unsuccessful, it did however tip me off that something was up. I ran the cleaner and it deleted a bunch of junk. I ran AdAware afterwards and it only found traces of the infestation to clean up. Not too shabby. And big Bill just announced that the product will be free once it is released. Good job Microsoft.

Microsoft has been pressured by the Upstart browser Firefox. The Software Giant says it will not be able to release a new version of Internet Explorer until the next Windows product is released. The reason is that IE is too integrated into Windows for them to upgrade it independently. Good job Microsoft. It just goes to show there was no reason for the Justice department to worry itself over whether Microsoft was be anti-competitive when they integrated IE into Windows. Now, that same move has made it impossible for them to compete. Firefox will release several new versions before the Next Windows Product (Code Named Longhorn, Nicknamed Longwait) is released.

Now that I am on the verge of not working at the place that I currently work at, I feel a little more freedom to talk about that job.

I have been there for six and a half years, which is of note, because I’ve only been in IT for the last four years. So here is the story of how I came to work there:

I quit my job. I broke the cardinal rule and quit my job without having another lined up. It wasn’t a very good job, just retail, photofinishing to be precise. I was underpaid, they had me commuting an hour to get to the store I was in. I was doing this so maybe I could move up to store manager, I’d been a manager once, but it hadn’t worked out. I had taken a vacation, my first day back they reviewed the lab and failed it. The lab was “my responsibility” but the store manager had let it go to pot while I was away. The regional manager was telling me how I needed to do better with the lab, and didn’t want to hear how I hadn’t even been there. I got upset. I got angry. I quit.

I was 26 years old, unemployed, living with my parents and I had no idea what I was going to do with my life. I decided I would put all my energy into becoming a professional photographer. To support that i applied to several places as a portrait photographer to attempt to pay the bills (yea, my parents charged me rent.) I got an interview to work at Sears Portrait center. It was only a part time job, but it was a foot in the door. The day of the interview, I put on best shirt and tie, got in the car and was on my way. As I drove, I was thinking through how I would answer questions I might be asked. And I was so lost in thought, that I drove right through a red light. A pick up truck, hoping to jump out and make a left hand turn before the on-coming traffic got moving, jumped out in front of me, and I nailed the front of the truck, cruising at about 60 miles an hour. The truck rolled, I never saw it, and I was spun 270 degrees. The airbag deployed, knocking the cigarette out of my mouth and the glasses off of my face. Everyone was OK, but the car was totaled, my insurance premiums went up and I missed the interview. Things were not going well.

My brother, for some reason or another, was talking to the HR Manager of a factory located near where I lived. There were in desperate need of workers because they had lost many of their workers during a long shutdown brought on by a strike. Their workers weren’t striking, but the company they provided parts for was. He arranged to get me an interview and I got the job. The work was hard. And it was hot as hell in the plant, the temperatures outside were in the 90’s, inside the plant the temperature was well over 100 degrees. But I was making money, more money than ever could have made at Sears Portrait Studio.

I knew I could do this work forever. Repetitively loading metal into a machine and then unloading it was not only back breaking for a skinny little runt like I was at the time; it was mind-numbing. I took some of the money I was making and invested in one of these “Get Your MCSE and earn $70 Grand a Year” classes. I didn’t get my MCSE, and I haven’t earned $70 Large in one year yet, but by 2000 I had learned a lot and did earn the less prestigious MCP, by passing 2 of the six tests required at that time. (They phased out the NT 4.0 Tests before I was able take them all.) I sent my resume all of the place, I even gave a copy of it to my HR Department just in case. Meanwhile, I kept learning and trying new things (much to my new wife’s dismay, our computer was often not functioning correctly as a result of my experimentation.) I went on a few interviews but with no success. I was beginning to feel panicked. The skills I had trained for were becoming irrelevant, NT was replaced by the shiny new Windows 2000, and people were talking about something called Linux, and the tech industry was poised for a bust. I was afraid if didn’t “break in” soon, I never would.

Then a strange thing happened. I was told the MIS Assistant position had come open suddenly and the New MIS Manager wanted to interview me for the position. It was the break I was looking for. It gave me my foot in the door and it gave the factory a Support guy for next to nothing. I spent the next four years, improving myself and improving my position. Now, its all over. Which is a good thing. For the last two years, I’ve been the only geek in the place, my manager moved on and was replaced by my current boss, an ambitious manager looking to climb the corporate ladder (Dilbert readers will recognize him as a PHB.) I will not miss the manufacturing environment, nor will I miss my boss. But a lot has changed in the last six and a half years and those change will be intertwined with that factory forever.

Jeckles, the voices in my head say, you claim you’re a geek but all you talk about is backpacking and politics. To satisfy the voices, I offer the following:

Let the geek talk begin. I have had to clean up a lot of spyware over the last two years, at work, at friend’s and family’s homes, even a little bit at home. The tried and true tools I have used are AdAware and Spybot S&D. As insidious as the spyware is, it seems to require both of these tools to clean it all up. The good news is that they are free. The bad news is that, recently, they seem to be unable to get some of the newer malware that is out there. There are anti-spyware software packages you can pay for, but personally I won’t sink any money into them while I can still get the free tools to do the job.

I had heard that Microsoft was releasing an anti-spyware tool. It is in beta right now (and it’s free) so I thought I should check it out. It irked me from the get go, because Microsoft want to make sure that I had a valid version of Windows installed before it let me download it. That really ticks me off. My version is valid. That is not the problem. Get ready for the mini-rant. The problem is the notion of providing support and patches only for valid versions. I am sorry that people steal Microsoft’s products, but that is no excuse to allow those pirated versions to become little cess pools of viruses, spyware, and zombie spammers. The existence of those kinds of boxes will only diminish the security of all the valid Windows installations out there. Mini-rant done, sorry.

Otherwise the tool worked fairly well. It sound some residual files from spyware I had previously cleaned off the test machine. My only complaint is that it categorized VNC as a threat. VNC could bee used maliciously, but is mostly used as a tool by admin types like me. The interface was smooth and friendly. It has a seamless autoupdate feature that is great. Plus it also includes some useful system tools like, a Privacy Tool that let’s you get rid of various temporary files and a System Explorer that gives lots of useful info about what is on your PC. The real test will come when I have an infected machine to work with. For now, I’m keeping it in my anti-spyware “toolkit,” and hoping that it improves as it goes through the beta process.

Yeah, I changed the template. The other one was getting crowded and I was, increasingly, having trouble getting it to play nice in IE. Since, half of you that swing by here still use that browser, I feel I have to design for it. (Please note: I use the word design loosely.)

I think I like it. It will take some getting used to. I stole it from Blogger Templates and then messed with it till I had it the way I wanted it. I want to put haloscan comments on here too. But there is no way for me to import the old comments in. I don’t want to lose the old comments. So until I decide to copy and past the old comments into haloscan, I’m kinda stuck.

Meanwhile, my job has gone from stressful to boring overnight. No responsibilities, no projects, just waiting for the phone to ring so I can troubleshoot whatever “helpdesk” issues come up. That’s OK. I can live with this.

I was dreading going back to work on Tuesday. I was all jittery still from the interview (no word yet by the way) and I knew that my boss had a bone or two to pick with me. I got in and got settled and braced myself for the inevitable. But it never came. If you are waiting for me to say something nice about the boss, keep waiting. He never came in. Around lunch time, the receptionist was nice enough to let me know he had called in sick. A reprieve!

Wednesday, no boss. Of course there is still work to do. But it was so much nicer to just do what I do, with out the micro managing and the criticizing. Wednesday Morning, one of the managers told me that we were not receiving vital data from one of the customers. This was tied to something the boss had been working on. I talked to the lady in the department who wasn’t getting her data, I figured out where the hell it was supposed to be coming from. I made some phone calls and I found out that the data was being delivered but the database wasn’t processing it. I worked with the support folks from the company that provides the Database. We discovered the problem, we fixed the problem. I re-queued the customers’ data and viola it got processed. The problem: someone had changed the configuration and it caused the data not to get processed when it was received. There are only two people who could have changed those settings and it wasn’t me. I’ll let you guess who screwed it up. But more importantly, it was me who saved the day!

The boss was out again today and will be out tomorrow too! It’s so nice to remember what it was I used to like about my job. Of course even though I bailed him out on this, I bet you he’ll still be ready to bust my balls over every little thing once he’s healthy again. I’ll enjoy this while it lasts.

We all know that Groundhog’s day was once the celebration of some rodent in rural Pennsylvania. Everyone sing it together: The Pennsylvania Polka! We also know that now in the dawning of the 21st Century that the whole rodent thing is a bit too quaint. Groundhog’s Day now symbolizes the existentialist dilemma of having to live the same day over and over again. Put your hand in mine … I hope you enjoyed your day today, because you just might have to live it again tomorrow.

I hope that is not the case for me. Once was quite enough, thanks anyway.

Yes, I went to the interview. I did well, I think. Now I wait and wait and wait.

Enough to make a person crazy.

In an attempt to keep my mind off of all of it; I am installing Gentoo Linux in one of my computers. I had planned to do this a while ago, but as these things go, I got sidetracked. Anyway it is going well. I’m doing the install the most manual way possible, what good is a distraction that is quick and easy. I’ll keep you posted. Yes, I know the blogosphere is holding its collective breath to see how I’m doing with yet another Linux distro.

Question: What the heck is a Mango Award?
Answer: Who cares. I won one.

Mango from Mango:Work Sucks Vegas Doesn’t decided to start some awards of his own. Awards people like me actually might have a chance to win, unlike some other awards out there. As a matter of fact I did win.

I won in the category: Self Proclaimed Most Boring Blog Ever, Even Though It’s Not OK. It’s not a Pulitzer or anything. Still, it’s nice to get recognition for this little blog o’mine.

Better yet, I’m up for Voting in Best Rant About Something Few People Care About. I think that I really deserve to win this one too. Don’t believe me. Read this or this or this. Did you read them? I didn’t think so. It’s because you didn’t care about what I was ranting about. It’s OK, I am comfortable with that. Now, go to Mango’s Blog and vote for me for Best Rant About Something Few People Care About. Thanks.

Have a mentioned that I’m not exactly thrilled with my job, lately.
Oh yea, I wrote a book about the other day.

Today, shortly before lunch, my File and Print / Domain Controller Server froze up. The display was still there, but the drives were non-responsive. This has happened before, not a huge problem but an inconvenience. I powered it down and then started it back up. It posted as usual, found the SCSI drives and controllers and then just hung. An hour and a half phone call with the Dell led to the conclusion that we experiencing a major hardware failure. Dell dispatched a technician and a boatload of new hardware. The parts arrived shortly before 4 and the tech arrived about an hour later. He replaced nearly everything excluding the drives of course.) Around 6:30 we powered it up and slowly but surely it booted. Yea.

The server had to then go through some steps to synch all the data back up on the drives. While this was going on my boss was chatting with the tech. He manged to bring up at least three times about how anyone who is unable to restore data on a server will be looking for work afterwards. Now, that may be true, but what’s the point of bringing that up while I’m sitting there waiting to see if the data is intact. I don’t know if that was supposed to be some sort of threat or if he thought it would make me try harder or if he was reflecting his own insecurities about what going on. I do know that I don’t like it. I don’t want hear about how I might get fired if everything somehow went wrong. For the record, I have every confidence that if the data on the server had been scrambled, that I would have been able to restore it from tape. If you need to fire me … then just do it and get it over with. But until that time let’s lay off the little off-hand comments cause they are messing with my Christmas Spirit.

Its good to be back. It’s been over a week since my last post and I’m sure the small portion of the blogosphere that realizes I exist, has written me off for an abandoned blog by now. It’s been an ugly week, to say the least. I want to tell you the story of my bad week, and since it is tied in with my job, I’m going to pepper it with a bunch of technical geekspeak, but don’t let that get you down, you’ll get the gist of it.

It started off last Friday with this Voice over IP (VoIP) Project. My biggest contribution to this project was to set up a new VLAN on our networking infrastructure. Basically, instead of running a completely new infrastructure for the phones, we would use our existing data network, but we would create a Virtual network for the phones to operate on. Nifty idea, but we didn’t have any VLANs and I had no idea how to set them up. We set up a conference call with another division that had already implemented a similar set up. That was extremely helpful and by about 4:30 I had a plan together for what I needed to do. Unfortunately, it involved reconfiguring 15 switches. I spent the next 10 hours tracking down the relevant data about each switch reconfiguring it and documenting how I had set it up. What made it worse was my boss kept stopping in for “progress reports” on how I was doing. He was obviously impatient with the progress I was making. I explained that the fact that no one had documented how the switches were set up initially meant I had to: physically walk to switch, climb up and look at the back of it to get its MAC address, so I could in turn determine its IP address. This only ticked him off more, probably because he was the guy who deployed them with out taking the time to set them up in a standardized fashion or to document that set up.

Around 2:30 AM, I finished as much as of the set up as I could. I couldn’t go any further, because we still had contractors running cable and some of the switches were not connected yet. I would not be able to finalize the set up until I knew exactly how they were going to connect back to the rest of the network and there was some doubt about that because they were running short on materials. I brought my boss up to speed on where I was and discussed the plan for Saturday. When I got in my car and drove home, almost 20 hours had passed since I had arrived at work Friday morning.

I took a two hour nap and then got back up and went back to work to meet the phone contractors. When I got there, I found a note from my boss saying that they hadn’t finished cabling we would have to wait until Sunday to rollout the phones. I worked with the contractors to get the switch set up and go over some infrastructure stuff. We plugged in a phone and after trouble shooting some SNAFUs got the phone to work with the switch over my new configuration. After 8 hours or so we had taken care of everything that we could without the cabling being completed. So I sent the phone guys home and called my boss brought him up to speed, he said that the cabling would be done by Sunday morning. So I went home again.

My wife and the kids weren’t there so I figured I’d watch some movie on HBO and catch a nap. When I turned the TV there was no cable. This wasn’t really a surprise, the cable company’s, Adelphia, online payment system had been FUBAR for 2 months, and their customer service number for that only operated 9 to 5 weekdays. I hadn’t bothered to call them from work or to write out a check and pay it the old-fashion way. I called customer service and told a very nice lady how ticked I was about the service, the lack of HD, the inconsistency of the cable modem service. Then I let her debit the money out of the checking account so I could watch some TV. Star Trek:Generations was on one of the movie channels so I watched that. I never did get that nap.

Sunday morning I walked into work to find my boss napping in a chair in the lobby. He had been there all night with the cabling guys. He stayed long enough to make sure he had communicated with the phone guys and then he was out of there. I spent the day trying to set up the remote switches that were now connected, and answering questions and solving problems for the phone guys. We got all of the phones deployed and the trunks cut over by 4:00 PM. I sent the phone guys home, called my boss to update him, and then starting inspecting workstation to workstation to ensure that all of them were connected to the new cabling that was run. There was a lot of stuff that just wasn’t quite right, it took me until 8:30 PM till I got it so I was confident enough with the set up to leave for the night. For the those keeping score, that’s 40 hours in three days, a 72 hour week. Monday morning I got in at 8 AM (as usual) and my boss was pissed, I didn’t know why but I figured it was cause there were some lingering Cabling SNAFUs to get worked out. Monday was an 11 hour day (with no break for lunch,) troubeshooting and working out those little things that always pop up.

I felt pretty good about the project, I had learned a whole new technology and implemented it. I had been able to take care of the phone guys during they day while my boss took care of the cable guys at night. I was a little plucked that no one had bothered to say “thanks” or “good job” to me, but that’s life. Then Wednesday, my boss hits me with “he is not satisfied with my performance.” He gave some “verbal warning” because I did not complete something he asked me to do on Tuesday. I didn’t complete it because he asked me to take care of it around 4 PM that day, I made the assumption (apparently a poor one) that it could get taken care of Wednesday morning. I explained that and he said I should stayed until it was done. I told him that I had to leave at 5 cause I was picking a kid up from day-care. He intimated that day-care issues were no excuse. Then he told me that he was mad at me because I didn’t show up early on Monday. He didn’t ask me to come in early, he said it should have just been “instinctive.” He said he was so mad about it that he was unable to talk to me about until that moment, it took him two days to calm down. I apologized for not coming in early, I had no idea that he expected that. He was obviously still angry. He then accused me of not checking all the workstations Sunday night. Apparently, he had found one that wasn’t switched over. I explained to that I did check them all even the area in question. Maybe with all the hours worked I missed something or made a mistake, but I certainly had gone to every workstation. He didn’t want hear it.

I’ve been in this job for almost 4 years, and mostly I like it, but I’m getting the feeling it is time to brush of the old resume and find something new.

My ASP.NET project is done! I’ve put an obscene amount of time and effort in to it. It is very good. Actually, relative to the requirements of the class, it is incredible. The cool thing is that the effort was not simply academic (Pun intended.) Once it is graded and I get caught up on my sleep, I will revisit it, clean up some things that didn’t matter in the context of the class. Once it done, up to my standards and customized a little, a friend of mine is going to use it as a web app for her business. Pretty cool. If it ever finds its way to the internet, I’ll let you know.

Now … time to sleep, then from one crazy project to another one that may be truly insane.

I apologize for the lack of content recently. It seems that at work, I’m expected to … well, work. This has been very inconvenient to me. On top of that I’ve been working feverishly on my final project for my ASP.NET class. Unfortunately, this has left little time for blogging. The good news is that my class is over this week, and my load at work should lighten up as we get closer to year end. It seems that we will be implementing a VoIP system this weekend. Hmmm, a whole new phone system, using new technology and new infrastructure, and the project was put together in less three weeks. It will be implemented in less than two. Maybe I’m wrong, but is sounds like a recipe for disaster to me. Good news: Not my project. Bad news: Not only do I get to help implement, I get to help with whatever fallout occurs.

Elsewhere, al Qaeda attacked the US Consulate in Saudi Arabia. You would’ve thought with all the success the Bush administration says we are having, that something like this could not have happened. Especially, not on the soil of one of our partners in the War on Terror. The situation in the Ukraine is getting ready to boil over. The Russians, doing their best Cold War imitation, are warning the West to stay out of it. It seems they want to be the only country interfering with the election process.

Maybe I’ll get a chance to put up another post this week. Maybe not. Do you think my wife will get irked, if I’m busy catching up my blog and the Christmas Tree hasn’t been put up yet?

While, blog surfing I saw that ReaZ was mirroring anti’s list of the members of the SBC. This seemed like a good idea, so I have added the list of shitty bloggers to the left column.

Today’s is Veterans Day, let’s not forget those who have fought to protect us or those who are fighting now. I may disagree with the reasons for war, but I respect those who are willing to put their lives on the line for my country.

ABC is playing Saving Private Ryan tonight, although you may not be able to see it. Several affiliates, including those owned by the right-wing Sinclair Group, are refusing to air it. They feel that the violence and profanity in the movie may be too much for family viewers. It is ironic to me that Sinclair endorsed a candidate for President who has led the country into a very violent conflict in Iraq and whose running mate told a Senator to “Go Fuck Yourself!” I can only imagine that they feel that make-believe violence and language is much more upsetting than the real thing.

Next week at work, we are launching a new software package. It’s a Maintenance Management system and it will require us to train all of our maintenance techs, tooling techs and stock room people. It will be a very big deal. I’ll be working long hours and spending more time climbing around machinery with techs than I prefer, but it should be interesting. I also have a project to work on for my class, so I apologize in advance if I slack off on the blogging. After that kind of fun in the beginning of the week, I am rewarding myself with a day off on Friday and a backpacking trip that weekend.

Yasser Arafat is dead. I will not demonize nor glorify the man. I will say that I hope, now that he is gone, that the Israelis and the Palestinians can work toward a peaceful co-existence. I think the two state solution is a good one. It has flaws, but all compromises do. These people, the Palestinians and the Israelis deserve peace. There has been to much killing. Can it be done? I was hopeful during the Camp David talks, but things have gone so poorly since then that I just don’t know.

I really enjoy playing blogshares, but I don’t really know what I’m doing. It’s all good, cause I’m making lots of blog money.

That is all.

Jeckles, why are you obsessed with your rating in Blog Explosion?
I’m not obsessed.
Oh Yeah, why do you check it so often?
I just want to see how people rate my site.
So you want a high rating?
No, I don’t care about that.
Why all this checking?
It’s the 1’s. People leave ratings of 1 on my blog. I don’t even know why. No explanation. No comment. Nothing.
And you’re not obsessed?
No!
You send emails to the people who give you the 1’s.
I just want to know why they left it.
No you don’t, you want to make them feel guilty about it.
You’re saying that like it is wrong.
Stop being such a sissy.
But I’ve worked really hard at this. I learned some CSS. I put a lot of time and energy in it.
Good for you. You should be proud. Now stop being such a baby and suck it up. Not everyone will like your blog. Some will disagree with you, some will think it looks bad, and some people will give you a 1 just because they are like that.
And there is nothing I can do about it?
Nope.
I’m sad.
Don’t be. Watch this.
Ahhh Star Wars.

Well this is just great. I was all ready to write a post about how great the Curse of the Bambino was. How the best part of the whole World Series was when the inevitable happened and the Sox lost. It would have been brilliant. But no! The Curse is over. Boston, it would seem, is TitleTown. 2 Super Bowls, 1 World Series, some jinx. I blame Shelly. She declared herself the anti-Curse and look at what’s happened.

I was looking around on Blog Explosion and found that my site had been rated 4 times. Yea! With an average rating of 4. I suck! My first instinct was to whine and ask everyone who came through on BE to rate my site. As I thought about that, I decided it would be much worse if 100 people had rated my site and I still had a 4. Blog Explosion has been cool. When I first started this, this summer, I did not know anyone else who blogged. It was very difficult to get noticed or networked. I feel BE has really helped with that. Later tonight I’m going to add some links, mostly folks I’ve found through BE. The extra traffic has been cool too, I’m very glad so many of you have taken the time leave comments. I know that takes more than 30 seconds.

At work, I’ve been tasked with creating an Intranet site. I started putting together a prototype last week and showed it to the boss. The scope creep began immediately. Could we have files uploaded that the associates could then access, e.g. new employee hand book. Could this be down with editing the site? Could we attach it to a database and use to collect data? Exciting, but close to being out of my league. The good news is that I’m not supposed to be web designer or a developer so the expectations are low. The bad news is I still have all of my other responsibilities.

I was prepared to download Slackware and build my Linux box, but Jon posted a message and suggested that I give Gentoo a look. I checked out their site. And I was impressed. This weekend, if time allows I will start setting the Linux Box with Gentoo.

Not having a great week. It started out well enough with a Ravens win on Sunday, but went down hill from there. Monday, I had to set up the general manger with his new Blackberry. That wouldn’t be so bad but I have no idea how they work, we don’t use them. The division he is going to, however, does. I got on the phone with their IS manager and she walked me through it, which left me with the impression that she did not know how they work either. She had update the template his mail file in Lotus Notes (for no apparent reason) as part of the process. This in turn hosed up his mail, till I got it straight again. I do not like it when things like that happen to computer of the GM. Nope. Not liking it at all.

Monday night of course I blew up the blog.

Tuesday, I got a call from the principal of my son’s school. Not good. No need to get into gory details, but the principal doesn’t call to tell you how great your kid is doing.

Now, its Wednesday and it appear the BoSox are gonna sweep the Cards. OK that’s not really that bad, but it sure takes the wind right out of my Curse ranting. That’s just great. What am I supposed to believe in now? Some cockeyed goat curse in Chicago, no thanks.

Do not fear. Things are looking up. My boss goes on vacation starting Friday, so that’s practically a vacation for me. I’m planning another hiking trip. Hopefully we’ll get that in, in about two weeks. And Halloween is coming. I really dig Halloween. First of all my first date with wife was a Halloween party. Secondly I love how excited the kids get about Halloween. But the best part is that we live in a neighborhood with about a million kids (just a rough estimate, accurate to +- 999,700.) It is incredible to see all of the little monsters and whatnot out there running around. Last year we had 8 bags of candy and we ran out. This year we have 11 but I bet we run out again.

Look at that, I think I just cheered myself up. I knew this blogging thing was good for me.

Last night, I thought I would switch my commenting over to HaloScan. When I saw that they had a tool to automatically install on Blogger powered Blogs I ASSumed that they would migrate my existing comments as well. It didn’t . It also put trackback on. I decided that is was unlikely I would ever get trackbacked and it looked cluttered, so I ran the tool again this time with track back unchecked. It installed the code again but did not remove the old code. It also put extra spaces between all the lines of code. So by the time I ran it again, you know to see if it would work better this time. I couldn’t even look at my code because there was only about 2 lines visible on the page at a time. I went through and deleted the empty spaces and removed the HaloScan code, all of it, and republished. To my horror, my template was broken. It wasn’t picking up the blog data. It looked something like this:

[meta blog]
[blog title]
[blog post]

Not cool. A few hours later, I had it back to exactly how it was before I started messing with it.
Hey, I’m not too bright sometimes.

So, I’m not impressed with HaloScan for comments, but I want something besides blogger comments. I can’t stand it that you have comment anonymously if you don’t have a blogger account. If anyone has a suggestion let me know.

On the Linux front, I’ve pretty much decided on slackware but I’m going to have to look at gentoo before I make a final decision.

I didn’t go hiking last weekend, because my brother-in-law backed out on me. He backed out on me because he didn’t want to walk in the mud. This weekend was his birthday, so I got for him a jar full of …. Mud. I told him that he could take it out and play with it any time he wanted; to help prepare himself for the next time we go hiking. It was all in fun and that’s he took it. I also got him a subscription to Sports Illustrated.

I’m still pondering which Linux distro would be best for the extra box. I’m intrigued by slackware but no decision has been made yet.

I heard on the radio yesterday that our fearless leader, Dubya, is working to focus his messages, war on terror, yadda, yadda, and values. Values? I hate this values thing. Whose values? Mine? I somehow doubt it. What kind of arrogance is that? To believe that your own personal values are so correct that they should molded into policy for everyone. Can’t wait till this election is over.

As I’ve clicked through many blogs, I see all these cute surveys that people have taken. I’m Anteater in the blog Environment. If I were food I’d be Cheetos. I’m a combination of the Girl Next Door and a Five Dollar Ho. So, I figure maybe I should take one of these. I tried one that held some interest for me, the one that says which candidate you should vote for if you were voting based only on issues. The questions were terrible and the results were bad. It said I agreed with Kerry 56% of the time. Implying that I agree with Bush 44% of the time. No! Dubya and I both refrain from imbibing alcohol and we both like baseball and … Ok that’s it. The other survey I took told me that if I were an Operating System I would be Windows 95. At least I wasn’t MAC OS9 or worse yet Windows me. I think I’ll stay away from the polls. It must be that they miss some of the nuances of my personality. That must be it. I’m not Windows 95, really I’m not.

Game 1 of the World Series tonight. BoSox and Cards. Go Curse Go!

I signed up for Blog Explosion and odds are if you are reading this so did you. So I thought I’d say hi to all of you Blog Explosion Surfers. I’ve been to most of your blogs, I’m pretty sure I have. Today, while surfing, I got this Message, “You have visited all the active sites in rotation.” Some I loved, some not so much. But it has been interesting to see all of the different things people blog about, and I have really enjoyed seeing all of the different designs out there.

If you’re cruising through, building up your credits, feel free to leave a comment. I get a kick out of hearing what you think of whatever inane idea I’m spouting off about at the time. If you feel strongly about it, you can contact me directly by any of the methods over there in the sidebar. And if you don’t like my blog, consider going to one of the blogs I’m linked to. I assure you that they are much better than this one.

As posted previously, I want to set up a Linux box and I am looking for some input on what distro to use. If you have an opinion, please leave a comment and help me decide.

First up, its seems likely right now that the Red Sox will go the World Series. Johnny Damon had a huge game. I just hope that means he is going to cut his hair now. I mean he looks ridiculous. The question now is what about the curse? But that is a discussion for another day.

Hi there to all you Blog Explosion surfers. Thanks for stopping by. You have to stay for 30 seconds so go ahead and read a bit. It makes the time go faster that way.

XM Radio announced today that they had partnered with MLB. This so cool. I’ve been an XM Subscriber for almost 2 years now and I have to admit I was feeling a little left out; seeing that Sirius had partnered with the NFL and they got Howard Stern. Now, it is all good. I’m not gonna listen to football, I have a 65″ TV. And I’m not going to listen to Stern either. But Baseball I would listen to. Baseball on the radio has always seemed perfect to me. I am looking forward to hearing many a game on the ole XM next season.

I have decided that I want one these iPods. Of course I’m not about to pay for it. A while ago I got registered in the free iPod “pyramid” thing. If I can suck five people in. I get a free iPod. If you are interested in a free iPod click here to get sucked in. You’ll have to sign up for something to be qualified. You can get a credit card and cancel it or just be the highest bidder at some point in an eBay auction (you don’t have to win.)

Finally, I think i need some Linux in my life. I’m going to convert my #2 box to the penguin. It is a PIII 533 MHz, 256 MB RAM not a bad box. In the past when I’ve set up a Linux distro it had been on a dog of a box, and as a result I never used it much cause I’d rather use the better boxes. I’d convert the #1 box but the wife and kids have no tolerance for that kind of thing.

***Playoff Update: The Red Sox are now ahead 10-3. I never thought they’d make it to the World Series***

Sorry about that. Anyhow, I want to set up a Linux box. The question now is what distro? I have the most experience with Red Hat but a lot of what I’ve read about them makes me think that they are not truly embracing Open Source. So I want to try a new distro. So I am posing an open question here. What distro do you recommend (excluding Red Hat.) Any advice or warnings appreciated.

I’m not on the trail. I’m sitting in my dining room reading blogs at midnight. I had imagined that at this time i would be tossing and turning in that way that I do when laying on the hard floor of a shelter. It is always worse when you don’t walk very far and it would’ve been only about two mile to get there. Instead, I’m not sleeping at all. I’m sitting here pursuing interesting but useless activities like trading blogshares. It doesn’t help that I don’t seem to be any good at it.

Work today seemed like getting kicked in the teeth. Maybe that’s just cause I knew I wasn’t hiking and that threw my day in to a bit of a funk. Or maybe its cause one of my users managed to screw up his laptop so that it was completely FUBAR. This was made worse due to the fact I couldn’t apply Microsoft’s fix to this because the laptop was created from an image and I couldn’t log in to the Recovery Console. I ended running a Repair Install and then re-applying SP2, it fixed it but it also chewed up my whole morning.

I find that I think about work differently than I use to. I used to have every intention of being one of those guys who dedicated all of their efforts towards their career. I just don’t feel like that anymore. I still care about my job and take pride in my work. It just doesn’t seem as important to me as it once did. I used to think that mark as a person would be through my career. If people said look at that guy, he sure is a great (insert career path here.) I thought that would be my finest moment. Not so anymore. Some of that change comes from having kids now. But mostly its because I don’t want to be a slave not only to my job but to the “next step” on the career ladder. I still get form my boss, “You’ll have to know these thing if you want to grow you career here.” I know that he is trying to be helpful, but it sounds to much like an implied threat. The unspoken, “and if you’re not interested in growing your career, we’ll move on with out you.”

I hear lots of talk about succession planning. I need to have the skills to replace my boss. I don’t want those skills. I’m a geek. He’s a manager. I don’t want to worry about headcount, budget, and burdened labor rates. I’m content to concern myself with one and zeros, domains, packets, viruses and Group Policy Objects. Besides I’m good at that. I’d be an ok manager at best and I wouldn’t like my job. I’m not a malcontent at work. If they want me to understand the business side, I’ll listen. But I’m no longer the guy volunteering to take on new responsibilities to show I’m ready for that leap to management. I’m just busy being the best geek that I can.

These are some of the pieces of stress I carry around with me that make wish I was snuggled up in my zero degree sleeping bag. Listening to wind blow through the trees and feel the cool air on my nose. Trying to sleep, but having a hard time cause I’m so excited about the walk the next day. Not this weekend. But it won’t be too long before I get myself out there.

My dad is back home. I went to see him tonight and I’m glad I did. I feel better having sat and talked with him for a while. I don’t know why, but the whole karma thing I could be in trouble. I know I caused those nice folks a lot of worry in my day.

I don’t care about the debates. I want to, but I just can’t get interested. My mind is made up, I’ve done my homework, I don’t believe I will hear anything in these debates that will sway my opinion. I’ll just get mad. I feel bad about it, but the way life has been going recently, I can’t bring myself to watch grown men insult each other.

I am hooked on LaunchCast. Why wouldn’t I be? It appeals to my inner-egomaniac. I tell it what songs I like and how much I like them and it gives me music based on those opinions. Anything that asks me my opinion and then reacts favorably based on said opinions is a good thing! I have been rating away and my station is pretty consistently playing music I like. About the only thing that would make it better is if it would work on Firefox.

Here’s a little Irony to keep you satisfied. The Lone Star Iconoclast (the newspaper of Crawford, Texas) has endorsed John Kerry for President of the United States.

For all of you that need to do more “hands-free” browsing on your computer… try this.

It almost Friday. I’ve got to stay late at work and upgrade our ERP server. Should be a blast!

I have made several changes to the blog recently. The most noticeable is that I got a new template. I had outgrown the old template. Too much stuff shoved into the sidebar. I had thought I would try to make my own. Writing CSS didn’t seem too hard. And it isn’t that hard really, but getting it to work at multiple resolutions in different browsers and with blogger, that is a little more challenging. Luckily, I found a template out there that was almost exactly what I had been trying to make. With just a few tweaks I had just what I wanted.

I also had moved from blogspot to blogcafe back in August. I’m very happy with their hosting. I get more control over the site and its still free.
I’ve also added some ads. I hope they don’t offend too much. Go ahead and click on one for fun;) or not.

I am looking for some feedback on the site (appearance or otherwise) feel free to leave comments. I may or may not act on them. Since I am still my own best audience my opinions are going get much more weight.

I got some new hiking boots yesterday. They are pretty fancy but still need some breaking in. I’ll be wearing them around for a while to break them in. The real test will be in about month. I have a 25 mile backpacking trip planned. I can’t wait.

My parting thought to you is an article about Cyberextortion. Can you imagine, “That’s a nice web site you’ve got there. It would be a shame if anything happened to it.”

That’s just plain creepy!

Once more, I’ve been gifted 6 invites. In order to get them to people who want them I’ve posted an offer at gmailswap.com offering an invite just for reading my blog. I really do want people to read this blog so increased traffic is probably the best bet. It just seems simple enough to me. You really want a gmail account, I really want traffic to my blog … it doesn’t cost anybody anything. What could be better? If you like what you read or are intrigued or you hate it but you want to come back for me … then that’s even better. Post a comment and you get the invite as long as they are available to me.

Sorry folks. I’m all out of invites. When and if Google (in their infinite wisdom) grants me more invites I’ll post it.

It’s funny how things get twisted around. As I talk to people at work and elsewhere about family life as it comes up. I find myself feeling guilty. Why? Because it seems that most people are unhappy with their marriages. I am not. I couldn’t be happier with my marriage. I won’t get all yucky by going in to that, but I’m truly happy. As I find myself in conversations where folk go on about how their ex is doing them in or how that can’t stand to be around their spouse I fell as though I can’t participate. What I am supposed to say? Gee guys, my wife and I have lots of funny together. That would be like rubbing their noses in it. So I stay quiet and end up feeling a little guilty that I have something they do not. But I can live with that :)

There has been a lot of talk about this reliever for Texas pitching the chair in to the stands, and what is acceptable fan behavior. Its this simple, Frank Francisco has no excuse for his behavior. None. On the other hand, fans are rude. In every game, at every stadium, there are fans behaving like buffoons embarrassing themselves and everyone around them. I hate to take my children to sporting events for just that reason. How twisted is that? I’d like to blame this behavior on the beer flowing at these events, but that’s only part of the problem. What it comes down to is this, as a culture we have lowered our standards. Just walk into any retail store, its almost impossible to get a sales person to pay attention to you. It makes me cringe every time a waitress tells me sorry about the wait we are understaffed. That’s not customer service, don’t tell me about your problems, just smile and say here’s your dinner and I’d probably wouldn’t have even thought about the wait. But customer service is no longer part of the job, we’ve lowered our standards.

Mozilla has just released Firefox 1.0. If you aren’t happy with IE you might want to give it a try. I just downloaded it and so far so good. One noticeable improvement over previous versions — I can now listen online to ESPN radio.com with out having to use IE. There is also a feature that identifies when a page has RSS feeds available but the “live” bookmarks that go with that seem to be hit or miss.

Once more, I’ve been gifted 6 invites. In order to get them to people who want them I’ve posted an offer at gmailswap.com offering an invite for a link back to my blog. I really do want people to read this blog so increased traffic is probably the best bet. I’m not trying to be coy with my invites, I wanted one too much for that. It just seems simple enough to me. You really want a gmail account, I really want traffic to my blog … it doesn’t cost anybody anything. What could be better?

Yes I still haven’t got rid of my invites. There are 6 of them. They will probably go quick now, because I poste a link to this blog on gmailswap.com. Heres the deal to get an invite here all you have to do. Drop me a comment with a way to contact you. I’ll send an email just to make sure you’re still interested (and to make sure you’re for real … I’m just funny like that.) When you reply I’ll send the invite.

If you came via gmailswap give the blog a read. If you like it, link to it or tell some one about it … if you don’t like it, keep it to yourself. I will update this post to show how many invites I have.

Ok. I’m all out of invites. If your still looking. Good luck. Try gmailswap.com or geevite or search Feedster there are plenty of other blogs out there offering up invites.

I’m taking this Web Authoring class and we’re learning some neat ASP.NET stuff. So, of course, I want to try it out at home. But I cannot get my IIS 5.1 to run the ASP.NET scripts. When I load the pages on the browser I get a beautiful

“Server Application Error — The server has encountered an error while loading an application during the processing of your request. Please refer to the event log for more detail information. Please contact the server administrator for assistance.”

I’ve searched the internet, called my professor and everything says I have it set up correctly. I’ve read numerous postings on the web including this, and this, and even this, and this, but none of them seem to address my problem completely. If I was one of those grumpy Microsoft haters, I’d be blaming SP2 for all these problems. While I’m not ruling that out, I’m not sure what the problem is. I’m going to try to set up the other PC to work, but that’s not a great answer either. I mean I don’t want to work on the 533 MHz machine when I could use the 3.0 GHz machine.
So far I’ve put about 5 hours into this problem and I’m more than a little frustrated. The point of this class isn’t troubleshooting it’s programming. If anyone out there has some insight in this problem, I’d love to hear it.

I went on vacation as advertised. And things were for most part nice. Went fishing, but saw no evidence of actual fish. Which was OK with me. I don’t really like to eat fish. My motivation is more to play with my fishing gear and spend time by the water more than actually catch a fish. Speaking of gear, I bought myself a new reel while I was out there. I am very happy with it. Now that I have added the reel to my rod, I’m doing very well at not catching any fish. We took the kids to play miniature golf and that was fun, but I think that one of the levels of hell consists of just missing your putts on a mini golf course. The only damper on the trip was that there had been a sewage leak in to the lake a couple weeks back. I know … Yuck. Of course, all obvious signs of it were long since cleared up, but the water was still deemed unsafe for prolonged contact to the skin. In other words, no swimming. On Sunday, they re-tested and said the lake was now safe. My parents and my 11 year old enjoyed a swim. For some reason, my wife and I decided to skip it.

I’m happy to hear that Bill Clinton is doing well after his quadruple bypass surgery. During this election season, it seems more evident than ever how great he was as president. The whole Monica thing was ugly to be sure, but compared to the messes this country is looking at now it really doesn’t seem that bad.

onegoodmove has several video clips of The Daily Show’s RNC Coverage. This is good stuff. Check them out. And I’m going to have to start watching The Daily Show more often.

I’m back up to 6 GMail Invites. I can’t give them away fast enough. If you want one drop me a comment with a way to contact you. I’ll send an email just to make sure you’re still interested (and to make sure you’re for real … I’m just funny like that.) When you reply I’ll send the invite. If you know some one who wants one send them this way.

I finished my week, like I began it: working on our new wireless infrastructure. But Thursday and Friday, I finally had some breakthroughs. I figured why we couldn’t the laptops to authenticate using 802.1x — It was because we had upgraded them to Windows XP SP2 since we had tested them. So, we decided to move forward simply using WEP. No problem, except that I was only able to get the handhelds to connect sporadically. My line of work can challenging, even frustrating, but the problem I am not supposed to have is things that sometimes work and sometimes don’t. Computer equipment is very consistent. If you can figure out how something works, you should be able to make it work again. Well after several hours of banging my head against the wall trying to figure it out, I had begun to realize that it wasn’t WEP, it was only connecting sporadically, with or without encryption. Friday Morning, I finally figured it out. Of the Access Points, 6 have the latest firmware (2.0.37,) 1 has the previous firmware (2.0.34.) The handhelds only communicate with the Access Point with Firmware 2.0.34. With the mystery solved, I put all of the access points back to version 2.0.34 and now all I have to do is get all of the handhelds configured and this project is in the bag. If your still reading … I know what you are thinking: Wow, that is really fascinating! Allow me to respond. What part of geek didn’t you understand ;)

I spent all day at work trying to get our Wi Fi Infrastructure set up. The trick is this; we have to get our Intermec Handheld Terminals on the same infrastructure as the other Wi Fi Devices (Laptops and such) and at the same time have some level of security. The Plan is to implant 802.1x security for devices that support WPA. Devices (like the handhelds) that do not support WPA will use WEP encryption. I had a lot of trouble to getting the handheld to use the WEP key. Finally, we got it going. I then tried to authenticate a laptop using 802.1x, it would authenticate to Radius Server without any trouble, but it couldn’t negotiate an IP Address from the DHCP server for some reason. I’m stumped. I’ll be back at tomorrow, we need this up by week’s end. If you have thoughts or suggestion, I’d be happy to hear them.

I just finished my first homework assignment. Just a basic review of HTML. Ordered Lists, Tables, Links. Kind of fun. For extra credit he had us use an external style sheet. I’d never done much with CSS, just things to screw up this blog really. It’s actually not too complicated. Hopefully we’ll get more in to style sheets in the class. I might actually be able to customize this blog the way I want it.

I finished Angels and Demons today and I loved it. TO me it was better than The DaVinci Code, but that may be because I have always been fascinated with the Illuminanti. They were both good books and I highly recommend them. The DaVinci Code is better packaged for mass consumption, but I thought the “twist” in Angels and Demons was incredible.

The O’s won again and have reclaimed 3rd place in the AL East. Hopefully they will end on a positive note.

The instructor that emailed yesterday emailed me back today and informed me that there was a class available, Advanced Web Page Authoring, and it started tonight at 6:00 PM. That sounded interesting, so I get my stuff in gear and got myself registered. Should be a cool class. We will learn some ASP.Net and some Server Side VB.Net. I am excited and relieved. Its bad enough that I am accumulating credits at a snail’s pace, missing a semester would’ve been terrible.

It appears that Deion is indeed coming, although it is very funny that everyone (me included) is making this much of deal about a 37 year old nickleback.

I’ve add the Google site search to my page, but it doesn’t work. This is because Google hasn’t indexed my page yet. My traffic stats say the google has checked the site, so it should index it before too long. I hope. I’ll leave the code in place. The Web Search Feature still works fine. I also have the AdSense ad down the on the sidebar. In theory the ads it puts in place should some how relate to my content. I am forbidden to click on them, cause that against the rules. I am curious about how it gathers click thru percentages and such. So if you have nothing better to do click on one and let me know what on the other side.

I have managed to give to Gmail invites away and for my efforts Google in its infinite wisdom has granted me another invite. The offer still stands.

The O’s managed to win in the 12th inning against TB. They had better find 3rd place in the AL East and keep it if Lee Mazzilli wants to keeps his job. I like the guy, but Angelos spent a lot of money to make this team better, I don’t think he is going to be patient if the Orioles finish in 4th place for the 6th straight year.

I’m doing my best to ignore the Republic National Convention. I realize that I have a Civic Duty to pay attention and all that. But they make me so mad. Tributes about 9/11. As though 9/11 belongs to the Republican Party. That the Terrorist attacks on our nation prove that Bush is a good leader.

“You can count on him, especially in a crisis” - Laura Bush
“He is a leader who doesn’t flinch, doesn’t waver, does not back down” - Arnord Schwarzenegger
“He has been tested and has risen to the most
important challenge of our time, and I salute him,” - John McCain

Now that I’m Fired up let hit a couple more points. You may recall the Republicans try to paint Kerry as waffling and indecisive. For example. All I can say is Karma’s gonna get you baby. Bush has put himself squarely on both sides of the statement he made about not being able to win the war on terror.

And I’m real sick of all this talk about the liberal media. Please! The media does what it does for reason that have nothing to do with politics. The don’t support Bush (although it seems like sometimes.) They don’t support Kerry. They move only where the mighty dollar tells them to go. And right now the dollar pushes them to the right. Don’t mistake cold calculated marketing for a political preference.

I still have 5 invites left. I truly do not want them to go to waste after I worked so hard to try and find invites myself. It seems Google has kind of flooded the market, so to speak, and I’m having trouble unloading these. Drop me a comment with a way to contact you. I’ll send an email just to make sure you’re still interested (and to make sure you’re for real … I’m just funny like that.) When you reply I’ll send the invite. If there is anyone left out there who still wants gmail that doesn’t have it, let me know!

No. No. No. Seems to be word of the day. My three year old might tell you that No is the word of the day every day.

I went to register for my Intro to VB class today on my lunch break. And the lady there told me … No! The class was cancelled due to lack of interest. I attempted to explain to her that I was very interested in the class and maybe they should reconsider. She would have no part of it. I am not put off that easily, so I figured I would just sign up for another one. (My work had only approved payment for that particular class, but when you sign up for classes on the day that they are scheduled to begin you need to act fast!) I asked her if I could register for Into To Java Programming. No! Cancelled. How about Principles of Computer Technology? No! Cancelled. How Microcomputer Operating Systems? No! Cancelled. How about the Internet Section of he VB Class? No! Cancelled. I am beginning to wonder if the ole Community College still has a Computer Information Systems Program. I sent off an email to one of the program advisors, but for now it looks unlikely that I will be able to take a class this semester. On the positive side, this may be enough to push me in to getting off of my ass and finding an actual undergraduate degree program to pursue.

No Internet Explorer! At least that is how I feel about it. I can’t stand it. Even with the fixes in XP SP2 it still just ticks me off. It seem that a lot of people still use IE because they don’t realize they are allowed to use another a browser. You are! Don’t know what your Choices are? Go Here! Its a cute little site that gives “success” stories of people who have made the switch. Kind of a take off of the Mac commercials from a year or so ago.

No! Deion “Prime Time” Sanders is not a Raven … but he could be as early as tomorrow. (So technically this is really a yes, but I had to keep with the no theme.) Chris McAlister did report to the team today, signing his one year tender that locks him in the team’s Franchise Player. It also pays him a cool $7.1 Million. It seem that the Ravens and C-Mac are still no where near agreement on a long term deal. It is unlikely that they will negotiate once the season starts. It is not unreasonable to imagine that C-Mac is going to get “tagged” again after this season.

Took a nice drive today up into Pennsylvania. Drove past Caledonia State Park throughout the Michaux State Forest to Pine Grove Furnace and from there up into the Cumberland Valley to Boiling Springs. In Boiling Springs we stopped at the Appalachian Trail Conference Regional Head Quarters. There wasn’t anyone there, But I looked through the register and saw that many thru-hikers I met this summer had made it that far. Very pretty country up there, not a bad way to spend a Sunday afternoon.

Tomorrow, I should be starting a new class. Intro to VB. I don’t have much programming experience, so it is a real blast for me to take these classes. I hope get to learn some cool stuff, what I can do now in VB is very limited.

I watched the Ravens third preseason game last night. The offense still looks a little lack luster, but they are making progress (slow but progress.) And I see a glimmer of something exciting between Kyle Boller and Kevin Johnson. They seem to be getting on the same page. And BJ Sams looked good. I think Lamont Brightful will be looking for work when the next round of cuts comes around.

The O’s won. Breaking a 12 game losing streak. I wish I had more to say but…

I am now up to 6 gmail invites. I can’t seem to give them away. So please, please let me know if you want one.

I liked The DaVinci Code so much that I bought Dan Brown’s Angels and Demons. I’m most of the way through it and in a lot of ways I like it better than The DaVinci Code, of course how it ends will affect my final judgment. At any rate, I can safely say that I’m becoming a big Dan Brown fan.

Long week at work this week. Ironic. It was only a 4 day week. It was a good week, made some progress on several projects. Also found out that our General Manger is leaving us to go to a larger division. That makes me sad, he’s a good guy and I know he has faith in my abilities. It will be fine, though, the guy taking over for him is pretty good too.

I found a great article (via onegoodmove.) It is authored by Garrison Keillor of Home prairie Companion fame. The gist of is that the Republican Party has moved from a mainstream Party in the 1950’s to the Ultra-Right wing hate machine that it is today. Of course, he says it better than I could ever dream of. He’s hit the nail right on the head. Both of my parents were raised Republican. They are registered Republicans to this day, but the party has left them behind. When they weren’t looking they became moderate Democrats, although they still resist admitting it.

My wife’s birthday was this week, also. And bonehead that I am, I didn’t realize it until after I got to work. And to make it even worse, I was kind of giving her a hard time that morning about taking care of this or that. A couple of emails and phone calls apologizing and wishing a happy birthday helped some, taking her out to dinner helped some more, getting her the laptop she has wanted didn’t hurt either. I still feel like a complete heel. We get so busy, people just shouldn’t have birthdays during the week.

I’m still feeling a little beat up from the hiking trip last weekend. I’ve been walking around real gingerly, try to keep my sore toes from making contact with my shoe. Thank goodness its the weekend and I can be shoeless or in sandals.

I still have 4 Gmail invites here that I’ willing to give away. If you are interested, leave a comment with your email address. I’ll send an email just to make sure you’re still interested (and to make sure you’re for real … I’m just funny like that.) When you reply I’ll send the invite.

It looks as though no one I know is interested in taking my GMail invites from me. So I’ll open it up to all of you out here in cyberspace. If anyone is interested let me know. I only have three, but I’m willing to share.

We got Red Hat all installed and rebooted and … Nothing. Nothing at all. My wasn’t that fun. It seems that it cannot mount the boot partition. Not good. By the way, I feel a little funny talking to my kid about the OS mounting things. Next step … We may try to install Slackware, I’ve never seen it run, so it would be an experiment for me too.

This year we finished Migrating our data at work off of an old Netware server to our new shiny Dell Windows 2000 servers. This left us the question of what to do with our poor old antiquated server. I decided to adopt it. I brought it home, its really not too bad. 450 MHz Pentium II Xeon Processor, 512 MB RAM, 4 SCSI Hard Drives (although I am pretty sure that 1 of them is Dead,) Redundant power supply. I decided that I would put Red Hat 9 on it. I also decidied I would have my 11 year old son help. What better to gain exposure to computers than that. Certainly better than whatever they are doing in school. Having them play educational games or run word processor on a computer and claim that they exposing the children to computers. That’s alot of what is wrong with the way computers are used today. People who run software successfully on a computer are considered computer literate. But there’s more to it than that. This is reason malicous worms can propagate by simply say click me. The clickers do not truly understand how the tool they are using day in and day out works, so they make the same mistakes again and again. It the same problem with spyware, I can’t tell you how many people I run into that have been infected with spyware and don’t even realize it. There are new toolbar in Internet Explorer, therre are new shortcuts on the desktop and they didn’t even notice it till I point it out.

Jeez! I guess I kind of went on a little rant there. The point here is that I am gong to use this oppurtunity to educate my boy, so that he does not grow up to be one of these people. And we can get a little father/son time in while we’re at it.

I called Eureka! yesterday and the lady there was more than happy to give me a new set of poles as a warranty item. She didn’t even want any proof of purchase from me, which confirms my suspicion that these poles tend towards this nature of defect. The only problem is that the poles are on back order till November at the earliest. I asked if it was possible to upgrade to aluminum poles. And it is. So for the small sum of 21 denarios, including shipping I will have a new set of stronger and lighter poles for my tent. Unfortunately, they won’t get here until Monday. So this weekend I’ll be taking my chances with the old poles, if tenting is necessary.

The Ravens have given Deion Sanders a deadline to decide about this comeback. So the suspense will be over soon, one way or another we will find out if Prime Time is going to be a Baltimore Raven.

After almost a week of testing, troubleshooting, phone calls, and emails we finally have the handheld units for our new software package syncing data with the database. Now we get the users testing and this project moving forward again. Yea!

I am surprised at how much I like the gmail account. I am in
the process of moving mail over to it. The interface is very nice
It’s more of a web app than a series of web pages (like Yahoo does.)
I love the keyboard shortcuts. The conversation feature I thought was
silly when I heard about, but now that I’ve seen it action I love it.
It is great way to organize my mail. Hell, this beta is more complete
than the full versions of many email clients. And to top it off, I
just got awarded three invites. I realize that by bringing up the invites I am risking people coming looking for them. I have a couple of friends who may be interested, so that’s where they’ll probably go. If I do end up with some extra’s I’ll find some way to get them out there. But don’t get your hopes up, quite yet!

So last night I lamented in this blog that I just wasn’t going to be able to get a gmail account. After that I cruised off to read some blogs. I stopped by buzzwords, a blog by a law student named Monica, and read the latest post there. The post was about many things including a mention of the song Girl from Ipanema and this groovy link. I love that song and felt compelled to leave a comment to that effect.
Well Todd, who keeps a blog on the same server, read my comment and followed my link back to this blog he read my entry about giving up on gmail. He commented to that and offer me an invite. And now I have gmail. Amazing, I should have given up weeks ago.
Astute readers will note that I have added links to Monica’s and Todd’s Blogs on the side bar over there. So go ahead and check them out.
I can’t help but be amazed by the way things like this come together. A funny little chain of events that led up to me getting the invite I desired. I couldn’t have planned for that to work if I wanted to. I must have built up some good karma somewhere along the way.

That’s right. I’m done trying. I’ve posted several potential trades on gmailswap.com I’ve tried my luck on geevite.com. I begged and pleaded with several people whom I’ve never actually met. I even went so far as to sign up for a credit card I don’t need through some free ipod scam, in the belief that the guy I did that for would give me an invite. He did not. He claimed it expired. Whether or not it really did, it has just shown me that its just not worth it. I think GMail is going to go live very soon, and once that happens it won’t have nearly so much appeal to me. I mean I’ve been doing free email since Yahoo first started doing it. Its not that its free or that it has a 1 GB limit that intrigues me. It is simply the fact that it is not publicly available. I love to get in on things like this before “everyone” does. But the chances of that look increasingly slim, so I give up. It is pathetic the amount of time and energy I have put it to that anyway, so I’ll have to move on to some new distraction… hmm well it is about time for fantasy football.

Stupid Bagle Virus or Beagle (depending on whom you ask.) The latest version was discovered around 11:30 am yesterday. By 3:00 pm, one of my users could not resist clicking and had got himself infected. Symantec did not have definitions available until some time after 6:00 pm. Needless to say, this left us a little vulnerable. To make things worse, Trend Micro, who corporate would have had us switched over to already, had definitions available around 4:00 pm. So, there was a tad of political pressure to make sure this was contained. I was able to delete the files manually from the computers I knew where infected. What a pain. By noon today, I had everything scanned and confirmed as clean. Only three people had been foolish enough to click on the price.zip files that were attached to the incoming emails — all three of them are senior managers. Just goes to show.

First thing this morning when I got to work I have a virus on my File Server. No problem Symantec caught it. It was some variant of the randex worm. It was in the home directories of two user who use the same workstation. Somehow, these jokers had the antivrus disabled. What fun. Not a very sophisticated worm and was easily removed. Only goes to show again how the users are the weakest link in security.
Soon, we are going to have to migrate from Symantec to TrendMicro. Corporate mandate. I’m sure TrendMicro makes a quality product, but I am very frustrated that I have to implement a new solution and go through the associated learning curve, just cause someone at the home office gets good swag from TrendMicro. Especially when we have a solid set up now. No wonder Dilbert is so popular.

Last night I explained what it was about blogging that appeals to me. But what I did not tell is what sparked me into actually doing it. gMail. Yep Google brand mail. I had heard a rumor that gMail invites were available to members of Blogger So I went to the site to see what the fuss was about. Well, obviously I signed up and started this blog. And no I didn’t get an invite. Which is OK. I’m really glad that actually started doing this even if it was for a silly reason.

Not that I’m over my obsession with a gMail account. Today I’ve been offering to write nice things in this blog about the person who extends me that coveted invite. The flaw in that plan is that they will read my entries and possibly conclude that I am unworthy of their invite. So be it. Cause maybe, just maybe, some one will read this and say “hey this guy is a dork! I better give the invite before he does something desperate” ;)

And if not. Well, at least maybe a couple more people will have seen my blog. And I’ll know that my ramblings are being heard … if not appreciated!

Blogging

Well, I’ve been doing this blog for two whole weeks now. And of course in true geek fashion I’m all over it. I spent way too much time this weekend working on the layout and I even snuck in a post from work today. But it is a good thing. I’ve done a little writing here and there but I’ve not stuck with it. I’ve thought for years that I should keep a journal, but never had the discipline. So what’s different about the blogging? Two things.

First, you can tweak it. Its a toy. Change the layout, change the template, monkey with the code. Now that’s more fun than a dusty old journal any day.

The other reason Blogging is better: Instant Publishing. I mean when I write I always imagine that some one will read it. I picture some sort of audience. When you keep a journal, who are you going to show it to? Your Family? You Coworkers? No. They already know much of what your writing. They may have been part of some of the incidents you are relaying. Its no good. Ahhh… but this. This anyone might read. I’m not advertising this to my coworkers or my family. My wife has the address but no real interest in reading my thoughts, bad enough she has to hear me rant in person, why would she want to read them.

I’m not doing this so people will read it that’s not really the goal here. I’m doing this because it good for me. My mind is full of ideas that swirl around and it feels good to try straighten them out and put down on this virtual paper here. But it helps to know that some one might read what I’m writing. There’s some validation in that.

Which brings to me an interesting point. It would appear that some one has actually visited this site. Kind of exciting. According to StatCounter around 5:00 pm yesterday someone came to my site. Cool.

Site Design

I’m getting rid of the expand/hide buttons. I like the idea, but I don’t like the fact that they default to everything hidden. So until I can bother t figure out how to change it they’re out of here.

Linux
Sometime I get a complex of sorts that I’m not a very good geek since I work primarily with Windows. Its not that I don’t like Linux. I think it is very cool. But right now, its a Microsoft environment that pay the bills. And then I say to myself: “I’ll use Linux at so that I can get better at it” But the reality is I work hard, and sometimes I just don’t feel like working a using a computer. There are plenty of Linux users who take an attitude that makes me feel like they think I don’t know much about computers because I work on Windows. But come on guys. Its not like I’m configuring ini files in Windows 95. I’m rolling out Group Policies to an Active Directories Domain. I’m managing IP messaging that sends our shipping and billing info directly to customers. Very high tech stuff. No knock on Linux. Not at all. There are lots of places for it. And I have no doubt that its usage will grow. But the modern Windows Operating Systems are very capable and very useful in many environments.

See I feel better for saying that. If anyone is actually read this, please feel free to comment and give me you opinion. I don’t mind people disagreeing with me, as long as they don’t tell me what I’m supposed to think.

Ok, I’m not so bright. After logging off and then get back on the computer, I see that the buttons still are not showing. I guess I will have to live with just text links until I can figure out how to resolve this issue. I can’t see setting up my own server for this fan base. Not yet any way. Of course, the idea of setting up my own web server has been in the back of my head for a while. At some point I’ll probably do it just for kix.

Not that anyone is actually looking at the site, but I’ve spruced it up a bit. Added some links. I have to give big thanks to Taylor McKnight. It is from his site that the buttons came from. Not he knows anything about that either, but I am appreciative. I mean if I’m going to keep a blog I have to keep it looking good, right. I actually spent much more time on this I should have. I wanted to avoid linking directly to The Buttons on McKnight’s Blog, but I can’t seem to store the button on Blogspot and of course I do not have my own server. I tried to trick the system, so to speak, by creating a GeoCities page, posting the buttons on there and then linking to them there. But it didn’t work for some reason. I could see the buttons fine if I put the code in FrontPage and displayed it. But when I put the code up on Blogger … No dice! So for the short term I will have them linked back to McKnight’s blog. Since no one is actually loading this page it won’t affect his server much. And I will keep working on a way to host the buttons myself. That what I get for trying to be clever, I guess. I also added a snippet of code to let the body of my posts be hidden. Not bad for a non-programmer.

OK that’s actually a rhetorical question. Isn’t it interesting though, the Mac Fanatics would follow Steve Jobs right of the edge of the Earth and the Linux/Open Source folks have the sound of a religious movement to a lot of what they say. But no such following for Big Bill and Microsoft. Kind of odd, actually. I mean, obviously a lot of people are using their products, but no one feels compelled to defend Microsoft or talk people in to using their products. They are simply the default software — what you get when you don’t do anything else.

And actually, what got me thinking about this is that I am an MCSE. So you would think that the MCSE’s would be big promoters of the Windows Servers and all. But we’re not. Microsoft doesn’t give us any special treatment. I’ve been back and forth with the MCP (Microsoft Certified Professional) people about what my certification level should be. I get conflicting information, the resources published by Microsoft to explain what the requirements for certification are unclear at best and constantly changing. It is very frustrating. To tell it briefly, I thought I had taken enough test to a MCSE:Security but my transcript shows only MCSE 2003. I sent an email to them and they tell me that it will show up soon … be patient. When it doesn’t show up I email again. Now they say oh… you need to pass one more test. I don’t know what’s going on. When I look at the site for the certification it seems they are correct. So either the folks at the training center were just wrong on this or Microsoft has recently changed the requirements. Anyway… this is no way to build a loyal following for Microsoft. And we’ll see how it turns out, but I’ll be ticked if one of those tests was for nothing and I have to take another.

Bulk mailer faces criminal charges - News - ZDNet

All Spammers Should Be Locked up and the Keys Thrown Away!

It seems that everywhere I turn I have some one coming to me and asking about all the “pop ups” on their PC. Of course its spyware. Its everywhere and it is insidious. I have run across everything, The notorious Gator, Bonzia Buddy, 2020 search, WhenUSearch, and on and on it goes. One was devious that when you rebooted the PC it left a hidden registry entry that searched to make sure its files where there, if anything was missing it directed the PC to its install files on the internet and re-installed itself.

This is outrageous. This is very much virus and worm type behavior, but the Anti-Virus companies have been very hands off with these. Only now are they offering a solution, but it is not included with the AV Client. And the part that makes me the most angry: people most be buying junk from those pop up ads. Otherwise these companies would give up.
How do I deal with them? First of all, I don’t download crap from the internet except from reputable sources. (If have to download something from a site I do not trust, I don’t do it on my work PC or the main PC at my house.) Second, I am aware of the way my PC should behave. As soon as it does something unexpected, I drop everything and look into it. I am amazed at how many people keep using their PC’s and just shrug off changes. “I don’t know why my home page changed to that.” “I’m not sure when that toolbar first showed up in the browser.” Finally, I use AdAware and Spybot S+D to fix any thing that does slip in.

The real answer to this problem is that people must be educated as to what they are doing and the consequences of their actions. We have all this great technology at everyone’s fingertips. And its all very easy to use. So people just go out and don’t consider that maybe some of the stuff on the internet may be harmful or malicious. You read about cases of phishing nearly everyday. Uneducated computer users are just victims of waiting to happen. I hope that these trends slow down and users realize that it is in their interest to learn more about what’s going on. So till then I’ll keep educating who I can.