No Subject

I got more sleep on the BiPap the lasst 2 nights. How do you ask? I was just about to tell you...

On Saturday night I switched the nasal pillow from the small size to the medium size. This seemed to help some. (I don't know if it just lets mor air in or is more comfortable, but I'm not asking, either. Saturday night I used thee machine for about 5 hours.

On Sunday, I decided that the mustache was causing problems and shaved it off. Sunday night I was able to use the machine for the whole night, and last night was the same.

Tara seems pretty happy overall that the mustache is gone. I guess I am too, if it helps me to sleep better. I actually don't feel tired today.

Road Trip(s) 2006

Jonathan called me a little bit ago. Turns out he is moving to South Dakota in July. We'll have to get over to Omaha one more time before he goes. In the Spring, Nebraska gets tons and tons of migrating birds. The girls really liked seeing that last time, even if it took us 3 hours to figure out what those things in the sky were.

I was thinking a couple of days ago that maybe we (our family) could do a number of small road trips this next year. We picked up a "Blue Goose Passport" book in Florida. It lists all the National Wildlife refuges. All the Visitors centers have unique stamps, and they stamp your book when you visit. They are all over, and we could get quite a few stamps with little road trips.

Anyway, Jonathan and I talked about setting a place and date for us all to get together. Russ, Rob, Scott, what do you think? We have to plan around school. (Except I do have some travel voucher money I have to use this year, but it would be just me and maybe one of the girls...) We would prefer to drive somewhere, so if the place is NYC, we need to plan now.

What do you think? I think we should go somewhere where there's something to do. (At least so the wives and kids don't get bored...) Do we also talk about just the 5 of us getting together somewhere? (Or the 10 of us, and we leave all kids at home. Harder maybe for Scott and Monika.)

Anyway, if someone has strong feelings about it, speak up. We should definitely start planning something now.

Just to get an idea out there, what about one of the SeaWorlds? Our girls love that place, we could definitely sit and talk, etc. Or if we're cheap, what about Russ's place? Do you have enough room for everyone Russ? Are there good hotels near you?

Comments?

Merry Christmas to all!

Well, I think it's finally here, for better or for worse. We have a lot of things for the girls to open. I hope they don't get too crazy. I wanted to get them some comic books, but it looks liek they are remodeling the comic book store.

Kate: Justice League Unlimited
Mary: Scooby Doo Adventures
Emma: Donald Duck

Any way, they will have to settle for what they have, it should keep them busy. Santa is bringing them the Narnia audiobooks on CD, and some Little Caesar's gift certificates. Hopefully they enjoy those.

I'm not sure what I'm going to do with Monday. There is no work, I took yesterday off, and I am getting a little bored. Maybe something will come up tomorrow.

Anyway, if there are any of you out there reading this, Merry Christmas to you.

Sleep, more sleep

I put 5.5 hours on the machine last night, I thought that was pretty good. I fell asleep at my desk yesterday afternoon, and got sent home. (at 4, I was back in at 9...) So I slept in this morning.

I meant to send out more Christmas cards than I have already, but I got side tracked a couple of times. I

m not sure if it's happening at this point. We only sent out 20 this year.

Need to generate some interest in this blog

So I need to start some interest in the blog. Maybe it would help if I would update it more often. Maybe it would help if I actually posted something interesting.

We rented 'Revenge of the Sith' tonight. It was by far the best of the '1st 3'. (It probibly still doesn't touch "Empire Strikes back"). I know probibly is spelled probably, but it bugs enough people that I keep doing it. It's like when I go to Buger King, and order the Whopper and tell them to hold the mustard. I know there is no mustard on the Whopper, but it's fun to see their (over)reaction when I do it.

Anyhow, we started using one of those $1 for 1 night rental units. (Not RedBox, no need to get McDonalds excited...) Overall, we think it's a great deal.

New Range!

Went and picked up the new oven this afternoon. Got an assist from Drew. The girls had biscuits for dinner. Many more foods to be cooked. If anyone's in the market for a range where you can only use 3 elements, and the oven does not regulate it's temperature, let me know.

On the way to the store, we stopped at Tom's to see what was happening. I did the old "Knock on the door as I turn the knob to open it" thing. They seemed to be pretty much just watching the movie....

Rob roller bladed to work during the NYC transit strike. Wouldn't you think that's a bloggin moment?

Bi-Pap machine

I have used the bi-pap machine for 15 days now, and have only logged 50 hours on it. Nearly every night, I wake up at some point, and take the mask off and turn the machine off. Some nights I it doesn't even register. I find out about it in the morning.

I'm giving it 2 more weeks, if I am still not using it all night, I plan to go back to the doctor to talk about it. (I wonder if it's not set high enough and I'm still waking up at night.)

My current theory is that I still have apnea events, and the machine tries to compinsate, which ticks me off and I take it off. It's just an idea...

Was everyone Christmas shopping?

I went to Home Depot and Lowe's today. It took like 3 times as long because of all the traffic on the road. Both malls had full parking lots. I didn't even find the thing I was looking for. I think all of Utah county was out shopping today.

Anyway, I thought I was done Christmas shopping until Amy called and reminded me that Darren wanted me to get Tommy's Christmas present for him. (I'd say what he's getting, but there's an outside chance he could read this...)

Blistex

Chapped lips? Try Blistex Lip Medex. It's great for when you wake up early on Saturday morning, rush out of the house to work, and when you get there, your lips are bleeding from being cracked and windwhipped.

End of blatent advertisement.

"I'm blogging this"

My wife is currently making fun of me. She doesn't like the title of this blog. For some reason, she doesn't think the first thing people see should be something that makes me look abrasive. (Let them get to know me a little first.)

Tough words from someone who is trying to share my ice cream sundae...

I have to get back to work.

So this off-campus housing thing hass been on, then off, then on , then off, and now on again. Hopefully they actually made a decision now...

"Go away or I will replace you with a very small shell script"

A few of the on-call engineers tend to call me a lot. It might be that they just are the unlucky ones to be oncall when the problems occur. Anyway, last Saturday, I got called, then called again for something else. That something else was a fairly large failure on the On-Campus housing app.

We have been working all week since to build a new solution for this Saturday, when they open the app up again. I think we have it ready now, but we are having a hard time convincing the on-campus housing people. Oh well, I guess we need to have users around...

It's cold here. I'd say very cold, but it's not very cold, single digits at night, not above freezing...

Christmas (present) thoughts

I was going to ask for a binary watch: http://www.thinkgeek.com/gadgets/watches/6a17/ Maybe I'll ask for my birthday.

I was going to get the girls a musical clock, maybe I can still work it out. http://www.seikoclocks.com/collections/melodies.aspx

This is a nice shirt: http://www.thinkgeek.com/tshirts/frustrations/5aa9/
As are these:
http://www.thinkgeek.com/tshirts/science/6e7e/
http://www.thinkgeek.com/tshirts/coder/5d6a/
http://www.thinkgeek.com/tshirts/coder/595d/
http://www.thinkgeek.com/tshirts/sysadmin/280d/
http://www.thinkgeek.com/tshirts/frustrations/374d/
http://www.thinkgeek.com/homeoffice/stickers/28e6/
http://www.thinkgeek.com/tshirts/science/60f5/

What's wrong with me you say? I'm a Unix Platform Engineer. That and I have been known to be grumpy...

What I really need are a few pairs of pants, if anyone is REALLY keeping score)

Gotta love management

Last night I got the following email:

"With the introduction of blades and the discussions surrounding virtualization, there has been confusion concerning vocabulary. Last Thursday, a group of engineers, product managers and architects got together to try and come to some consensus as to terms. The results are summarized below and represent a start. I am going to present the terms as I remember them. If clarification is needed, please feel free to comment. The intent is to get everyone talking the same language.

Thanks,
Bill.

Chassis – this is the physical container that houses the mother board, cards, etc.
Examples include DL380’s, blades, etc.
Enclosure – enclosures house many chassis’.
Server unit – the operating environment slice in which application instances can run
Logical dns – represents an aggregation of server units."

I replied as follows:

"It took a group of engineers, product managers, and architects to come up with that?"

What followed was a half day worth of email from all locations starting with a 2 page reply with explainations about their thinking behind each name, etc. (From an architect. My manager thought it was funny...) Then the CIO chimed in a couple of times, other engineers chimed in, and the architect replied to all of them. One of the documentation people tried to create a diagram, but he got it wrong, the CIO jumped all over him, and then he had to talk to an engineer, get the diagram fixed, and resend. One of the other architects replied that his head hurt worse now than it did when he was in the meeting making the name settings.

It finally ended when one of the engineers sent the following:

"RED NECK Vocabulary

Chassis - Underneath my pick up
Enclosure - Top on my Jeep
Rack - How big them horns are on a slab of meat
Blade - That knife I killed that varmit with"


I was just being sarcastic. There really didn't need to be any reply back to me in the first place. I guess that will teach them for saying "If clarification is needed, please feel free to comment." During the middle of the day, I sort of regretting starting the thing off, but given the chance again, I'd probably do the exact same thing again...

A quilt? That was all that was needed?

The girls never go to sleep at night. Instead they have a 3 hour party, until they one at a time collapse, exhausted.

Mary got her new quilt last night from her grandma. Last night they went right to sleep. Amazing.

Candy

Kate ended up not taking an apple to her class today (for making applesauce) so I took one of her at 10. Her teacher was busy with 8 of the kids talking to them about sitting quitely in 'town square'. After the kids ran off to recess, she told me Kate is normally not like that, but today she just wouldn't stop talking. I told her it was because we had a Ward party last night and she was full of sugar. It was like the light went on for Kate's teacher. She said they expect things like that the week after Halloween, but wasn't ready of it this week.

The grand Autumn season

Why is it that every time the leaves start to fall, it rains? Then you have a large pile of leaves, but they are wet, so you do not want to rake them. My only consolation is that we always eventually get a large windstorm that sends a large number of my leaves to my neighbors garage. :)

(The rain isn't bad, hopefully it will ripen the rest of my tomatoes. Chili anyone?)

7:00 am?

SO I went to a conference in FLorida last week, and the classes there started at 8am. I was waking up at 7am every day, which is 5am my time... The last couple of days I have woken up at 7am. It's still dark at 7am. What's up with that?

I went to the conference with a couple of objectives: Give a good presentation, Pass a specific certification exam, and get answers to some questions I had. All three objectives were accomlished, so I guess I can forgive the conference for that egg burrito they served me.

Ft Collins is cold

But then so is Utah...

It's nice to visit HP, and see that engineers are just like me.

The baseball playoffs have started today, even if some of the teams I wanted to see here this year are no longer playing

Thoughts before leaving town

Rob is not letting his baby wear any BYU outfits until BYU beats a team with a winning record. I don't blame him at this point.

I am going to Ft. Collins for 3 days. Too bad we don't play this week.

At the end of the sleep study, the tech said that since he's not a doctor, he couldn't discuss the results, but I would be back for a CPAP. No word from the doctor on the schedule yet.

I missed my mission reunion the other day. It took us 1.5 hours to go something like 8 miles on the freeway.

I finally bought weedwhip line

It's been 5 weeks since I used the weedwhip, I ran out of line, and didn't feel like buying more. (Not sure how that stretched into 5 weeks, but not watering the lawn helped.

At work, people still seem really happy with us. (The really successful first week of school helped a ton, I think.) I go to Ft. Collins in a week and a half, and Orlando this time next week. (Orlando should worry that I'm coming, that presentation of mine is cursed.) Tara is coming, Mom is watching the girls for us.

One drawback to my calling - the stake president maintains 2 things of jelly beans. One in his office, one in the waiting room. I eat too many of them.

It's been a while.

On Saturday, I do a sleep study. It sounds like it's just a bunch of people potentially ticking me off while I sleep. Work has been busy. More to come.

Another conference cancelled

Well, this one is postponed, at this point. I think my presentation is cursed.

I was supposed to head to New Orleans Sept 11, but the HP technology is offically 'postponed' at this point. They have sent out emails saying that the media likes to sensationalize things, but I don't see any way they are having this thing down there anytime soon. I'm just glad the hurricane wasn't 2 weeks from now while I was down there.

I think HP still wants to keep the conference down there so that they can help out the economy at some point, and they are currently saying it will be later this year, but I'm not holding my breath.

Hopefully they can get those people out of there and arrest the troublemakers.

She's really one of us now.

Tara just told me that she hurt her hand and didn't know how. I said "What did you say?", but she could only laugh. She's really one of us now. We'll see if she still laughs at me next time I break something.

First day of school success!

Finally, we have a successful first day of school from an IT perspective! Normally, I work 16+ hours that first day dealing with and resolving the problems of the day. Jess and I spent most of the day fairly bored. Everything was fine, and we did not have an outage. (I even went home early...)

Stake Reorg (cont.)

So the meeting went well, we have several blocks worth of people who are in our new ward, who came from our old ward.

They sustained me, and let me stay off the stand. That was nice of them, since the girls were tired. (We walked the mile and a half to the meeting. The girls made it, and as an added bonus to us, they went right to sleep when we got home.)

We'll have to see how long it takes everyone to get acclimated to the new ward.

Stage Reorg

They announced the reorg meeting for tonight at church today. I must have said "Come at six and you'll see..." about 100 times. The gossips were busy.

HP Support

So I had a machine with a failed disk yesterday. HP flew in a new one, and the right box came, but the wrong disk was in it. A new disk was flew in this morning, we plugged it in, and it worked right up to the point where the server was rebooted. At this point, I am waiting to hear back from the CE again. Lately, we haven't had any HW failures that were simple to fix, I'm not sure what the problem is around here.

The Stake Clerk works in the same department as me, his office is right upstairs from mine. He came up to me, (knowing about the calling) to see if I had talked to the Stake President yet. It turns out that he doesn't wear suits to the Stake meetings, and the old Stake Executive Secretary didn't wear a suit either. It looks like I don't need to go out and buy a new suit after all, the one I have should be sufficient. I still have to find out if this means I have to sit on the stand during Stake Conference...

The nurse from the doctor's office called this evening. On top of everything else, she said that I have mono, too. I guess I really had an excuse to be tired. Now I am at the point of being more sleepy than tired. I don't feel out and out exhausted at this point.

Next week is a busy one. The first day of school is Monday, we are hoping to finally have acceptable performance in our web environment for the first of school. I for one am keeping my fingers crossed.

The Peoplesoft team has finally decided to tune their environment. (I have only been telling them for 6 months that they needed to.) A consultant will be in Monday for the week working with them. I hope this finally puts the issue to rest and gets them so they stop freaking out about things. Mostly, I hope they stop blaming the HW or OS for their problems.

Things have been happening here...

Tonight I was called to be the Stake Executive Secretary. I think I need to buy a suit for the first time in 11 years... I have now experienced how an Elder's Quorum Presidency works, how a Bishopric works, and now I will be involved in the workings of a Stake. (Not to mention the year I taught 12-13 year old Sunday School. I think I have finally recovered from that one...) There's always an opportunity to learn.

Today is Emma's birthday. We are eating cake and ice cream. I took her to lunch with me to the Cannon Center for her birthday. We gave her a new Barney and a barney blanket. She seems pretty attached to them already.

The Peoplesoft team is having performance problems at work. They seem pretty confused. They have called in a Peoplesoft performance consulting firm to help starting tomorrow. I keep telling them their problem is database related, and they have one of more bad queries that keep running there, but so far, they have not listened properly.

I feel better today than yesterday, I didn't wake up exhausted this morning. The DHEA and Testosterone replacements should be here tomorrow. The testosterone was pretty expensive, though. Hopefully these will get me all the way feeling better, and I won't have to take them from now on. We'll see.

Kate had a meeting with her kindergarden teacher today. Kindergarden starts in a week and a half, but the teacher did an evaluation. Kate seems kind of excited, we'll see how excited she is about walking to school every day.

As the medicine turns...

So, it wasn't 'herbal' or 'non-regulated'. The pharmacy they were sending to is a 'compounding' pharmacy. They can compound the testosterone to 10%, where the stuff from the local pharmacy is 1% solution. My doctor said with the compounded, I would be lathering all up with the stuff...

I ended up coming coming out feeling better about it, but I still got a prescription for the thyroid medicine for the local place.

We'll see what happens.

Thoughts on medicines

I woke up this morning dead tired, like most mornings lately...

So, I have been doing some online/in-person research tonight on the hypothyroid/low testosterone/low adreno-something-or-the-other. (I can't remember if it was DHEA or ACTH...)

When I talked to the nurse, she told me that one of the things were a 'natural' medication, and there were only 4 places in Utah that made it, the closest being SLC. She told me she would fax the stuff up to them, they would contact me, get it paid for, and send the medicine. I asked about my insurance, and she indicated that insurance usually doesn't cover that sort of thing, but the total for all 3 medicines for a 100 day supply would end up being something like $30. I asked about coming back, and she said I could come back in like 3 months, and get the blood levels checked again, or if I was still feeling bad in a few weeks, come in for an appointment then. When she told me about the low testosterone, I told her that it was because I have 4 daughters and a wife at home, and it was just me. She said they would prescribe a baby boy...

A couple of things didn't really sound right about that conversation. First, my insurance is pretty good, they cover a lot of stuff... It sounded strange to think that I would have something wrong with me that they would not cover.

I talked to a guy from work who has been working through thyroid problems for a couple of years, and the insurance definitely covers that medicine. This guy has been getting his LEVOTHYROXINE level adjusted all the time for the past 2 years trying to get it adjusted correctly. He pays $10 for 100 pills. I looked on-line (Webmd.com - there's always a lot of information there, I sort of trust what they say, but never completely...) about the different things, low thyroid levels need to be tuned and said the following: "Natural forms of thyroid hormone - quality and effeciveness unregulated, and while the active ingredient may help, the product could be dangerous to the patient."

The information on the adrenal problem was harder to look up because I really forgot what she said. (It was either DHEA or ACTH, I think, but I really don't remember.) For ACTH, they say that the cortisol levels should be checked also, if cortisol is low too, it's a hypopituitary problem. (As far as I remember from high school biology, the pituitary gland regulates all the others. I don't care, no one at this point is saying anything about pituitary at this point, I'll look it up another day...) The DHEA hormone medicine normally raises testosterone levels on it's own, but not a lot. (She said I was at 7.5, and normal is 30-40)

I have a new joke now. I grew my mustache to compinsate for my low testosterone levels...

My blood glucose and chloresterol levels were normal. That's a good thing.

I went to the store tonight. I was at the store last night, but we were not out of diapers and paper plates then. (We weren't out of ice cream tonight, but that didn't stop me while I was there.) I talked to the pharmasist, he was suprised to hear that some sort of "natural" remedy was being prescribed. He showed me how they used to use cow liver or something, but the dosage wasn't easily regulated. He had 15 different doses of the synthetic stuff, and everyone is different and had to be regulated. I suggested that I was going back to the doctors office tomorrow, he concurred it was a good idea. I drove to RiteAid after that and talked to their pharmasist. I told him how the 3 levels were found, and a "natural" remedy was being recommended with 3 months between the checks. A look of suprised shock came on his face. (That was my interpretation, anyway.) I told him what my insurance was and he agreed that they covered those types of medicine. I told him I thought that for thyroid, it had to be fine-tuned until you had the right dose, and he said definitely, you have to keep checking and changing until you are regulated. Both pharmasists said the "natural/herbal" treatments were not regulated by the FDA (something Tara has been saying all night) and may not be the best to take. The RiteAid guy said I should definitely be going back to the doctor tomorrow to ask him my questions, and if I didn't get answers that made me feel better about it, I should go and talk to someone else, like an internal medicine guy.

Current plan - I am calling the insurance company in the morning to ask them a few coverage questions, then I will be at the doctors office by 9am at the latest to talk to them. I don't think I want to go the "All Natural Route", where real drugs would only cost a little more. (I can always ask them about the real drugs, call DMBA and verify specifics...) Plus I don't really want to wait for a week for something I can get tomorrow if I start to feel better by the weekend... If I pay up to $10 more each time, it's only 10 cents more a day.'

More updates in this saga to come...

So what's the problem anyway?

Answer: hypo-thyroid, low testosterone, and low DHEA.

Solution: Medicine. We'll see how it goes...

Slacking off you say?

So I am working at home reading my 1600 page book. I could post information about the book, if you want me to.

The doctor drew blood today to do a full blood workup. They are also scheduling a PulseOx for sometime soon to see if I have sleep apniea. The doctor says they have people called "Sleep Hygenists" who help with that sort of thing. At least they don't call them "Sleep Theripists"...

*** New Record ***

New "left-handed" minesweeper records:

Beginner: 5 seconds
Intermediate: 36 seconds
Expert: 116 seconds

HP World 2005

I was supposed to fly to San Fransisco this Sunday for HP World 2005. I even had 2 presentations prepared to give, and 2 others I was helping on. Turns out that Interex went Chapter 7 bankrupt a month ago, and HP World was cancelled.

HP sponsered their own conference, the HP Tech Forum, but I had not planned on attending. It is the 2nd week of September. Last week I got a hold of the program director for the HPUX track and emailed my 2 HP World presentations to her. At the time they were not accepting any more presentations, but today they came back and wanted me to do one of mine, and scheduled me into a slot in the conference. I just finished converting the slides to their template and submitted it, so I'll be in New Orleans the 2nd week of September.

HP has made a deal with prometric that all HP Certified attendees came take as many certification exams as they want during the conference. I am going to take the HPUX CSE exam, but I have no problem failing it, if I do. (The exam is free, after all) The "study guide" for the exam is a 1600 page book, and I am only to about page 250. If you want to see the test details, check out the exam prep guide at http://h10017.www1.hp.com/certification/region/americas/cse/bcs/hpux.html I'm not really taking the test for amy good reason, it's not like I'll get a raise, or more respect, and I am not looking for another job, it's just something to do, and it can't hurt. (The headache from the test itself is bound to wear off quickly)

Graduation Day

So today is graduation again. On graduation day, I am supposed to leave work at 2:30 so parking is available on campus, but every year, I end up getting called and working anyway. It's usually something that takes hours, so I end up sitting at home working. A few times recently I have had to go back up to campus to work on a server in the data center.

This semester, I decided to stay at work to see if the opposite would happen. (Stay on campus, have nothing to do.) No such luck, they called me, a server was not responding. I ended up working. (But not at least while I was pretending to not work like in the past...)

People are having babies...

So I wonder why Dan Tano keeps following me. I move apartments in Moon, he follows. I get engaged, he follows. I go the the place for the honeymoon, there's Dan. (Who had gotten married the day before.) We have a baby, they have a baby. I think all our kids are 2 months older than Dan's kids, even for the youngest.

It's like we live in some strange parallel universe....

Congratulations Dan and Chris.

Congratulations Rob and Amy.

Did I miss anyone?

The Crossroads

The power problem on my laptop ended up being a bad battery. I've been running on that battery for weeks, I could have just swapped them out and not had the flickering. Oh well, what's a few epileptic seizures every now and then?

It looks like my first tomato of the year will be ready to pick tomorrow. We've had all kinds of Zucchini and Cucumbers, but the tomatoes got planted a little late, had a hail storm, and got cold once or twice. I have some pepper plants too, we'll be having some really good chili this fall...

I have to water the lawn tonight, or it will start drying out.

And speaking of watering things down, did anyone out there hear about the semi that exploded in Spanish Fork canyon this afternoon? It was carrying 35,000 pounds of ordinance, and created a crater 60 feet wide and 35 feet deep. Try to avoid Highway 6 for a while...

Laptop trouble...

My laptop has yet another power problem... (This is the 3rd this year.) At least this time the machine is not shocking my when I touch it.

When good pie goes bad

So, my theory is that when you have a chocolate pie wrapped in tin foil in the fridge, and the pie has bananas in it, it's better to eat it in a fairly quick time period, not a week later. Also, did you know that Frontier Pies and Prestwich Farms are no longer in my area? (They've been gone for more than a year.)

***Remember the days when a good pie and a very powerful portable spotlight would keep us busy for hours?***