Basketball - Saturday - 1pm

I bought 20 basketball tickets for Saturday's game. They went on sale for a dollar each so that the seats would fill. If you want to come and you are in town, let me know. I have 6-8 tickets left. (Tom can only come if it's snowing or raining...) We're in the seats, not the bleachers.

I also have money on my card for consessions, if that helps sway you any. (Nachos anyone?)

Junk food shopping

I spend $65 at the store after work. Pringles were on sale for a dollar a can, So I figured why not?

Just kidding. Santita tortilla chips were a dollar a bag, I got 15 of them. They are guarenteed fresh until March 15th, I'll easily have that beat. Pringles were a dollar each, I got six of them. Mary wanted chocolate milk, so I got a gallon. (Does chocolate milk count as junk food?) Tara wanted me to get the fridge packs of pop, they were on sale 4 packs for $11, and if you bought 4, you got 2 2-liter bottles for free. I got 5 packs.

I also got Tara some allergy medicine ($15) and bought my weekly set of size 3 diapers and size 5 diapers ($11 each), so it's not like it was all junk food in the $65...

Do torilla chips really count as junk food? They are made from ground corn, and corn is good for you, right? In the last area of my mission, there was a lady named Barbara who went to a bunch of stores early in the morning when the bread delivery and chip delivery came in. The vendors gave her all the old stuff that didn't sell, but just past the sell by date. She would collect all this stuff and take it to the local food shelter. She also stopped at the missionaries place every day to drop off food. (There was 4 of us in the apartment, she really brought more than we could eat.) If we were out of bread, she would bring a loaf. About once a week, she would bring a pie. The first day I met her, she brought chips and salsa. This wasn't just bottled salsa from "New York City", (no offense to the people of NYC, just remembering the old PACE picante commericals) but it was fresh salsa, the kind you get in a cheap plastic container, that usually goes bad in a week. Anyhow, she brought it, no one else wanted it, so I ate it for lunch. (Anyone who knows me good enough should know that I can drop a bag of chips with salsa in no time.) I commented to her the next day how good it was and how much I enjoyed it, and every time she could, she dropped off chips and salsa. I think it was 3 or 4 times a week, at least. Chips and Salsa became my staple for the last 4 months of my mission. (Sometimes I wouldn't wait for lunch, and just have it for breakfast...)

It didn't kill me, I got by just fine, how could chips and salsa be a junk food? (I realize that there are people who say "My uncle Charlie smoked 3 packs of cigarettes a day for 80 years, and he was in fine health until he died", but would chips and salsa really kill me?)

In high school I had a chemistry teacher who used to always tell the story about how he once got posioned by eating too many strawberries...

It's time to move those girls out.

No, we aren't sending them to live with their aunt. Mary and Emma keep each other up all night. Sometimes they are both willing parties, sometimes one is driving the other crazy. Tara thinks it would be best to move Mary out. Mary was not happy about it yesterday until we said we would move Ruth in with her.

Anyhow, our back bedroom is a mess. It has toys from one end to the other, and needs a little work. I moved an old dresser out today that was taking too much room, we need to get the room cleaned up and move things around.

Anyhow, hopefully moving Mary out will help these guys sleep at night.

New Blog Title

And the winner is: Rob!

Thanks for the new blog title. If someone thinks of an even better one, let me know, I have no probems changing it at the drop of the hat. (And if enough suggestions come in, I will do a "Title of the week" contest...)

Tara will especially like the title change. "John was here, deal with it" just grated on her for some reason.

2006 Goal update - 29 Jan 2006

1: Move up on ITRC forums. I am currently at 3397 points. (40 points this week) This moves me up to position 155 on the list. (Only 40 points you say? Why didn't I want ot help people this week? Well, I really did answer a lot of questions, but the thing is that sometimes it takes a while for people to assign points, if ever. I once got a 100 point boost in points without even answering any questions that week. Usually I figure half the people I answer questions for do not assign points. I figure this week the percentage was higher, but I could get a big boost on Monday when all those people go back to work, you never know.)

2: Mission Journal - No progress made. I plan to do something soon... (That's why it's a goal. If I didn't have plans for it, I wouldn't mention it here.)

3: Garden Retaining Wall - Spring 2006

4: 6 Wooden Chairs - Spring 2006

5: Weight - 219 right now. The Doughnuts and Soda team is #6 on the list. (Average weight loss. Our average team weight loss is 4.33 pounds. Two people have lost the same weight, one person has lost a pound more. Quickly - How many pounds did each person lose?)

6: Gazelle - 15 minutes of use this week. A 2006 record!

7: Vacation - "President's Day" - Age of Empires round 2. Bring it on, Drew and Tom.

Wasting time update - 309 badges at MSN games.

What time is it now?

I just stayed up to late listening to CD's of an old radio program of Superman where he goes searching for Batman, who had been kidnapped. (The storyline is really besides the point.)

Today Stake Conference started, and I spent the morning/early afternoon babysitting the girls. I waited way to long before taking my medicine for the day, and I was irritable going into the priesthood leadership meeting. As soon as the meeting started, the irritablibly went away. (I attribute it to the fact that I took my medicine a hour earlier plus the fact that I was attending Stake Conference.) As the meeting progressed, my ankle felt worse and worse. It felt like if I stood up on it, I would discover it broken. (Not the case, but that's how it felt.) After the meeting, I went home to take some more Ibuprophen. That didn't really help. Walking on it actually helps a little, and trying to stretch it out a little helps after the first inital pain, but even now it hurts pretty good. I don't know what the problem is, but we did go shopping yesterday for something like 6 hours.

Anyway, I wasn't looking forward to trying to sleep with it like this a little while ago, so I kept listening to the CD's. Noe they are over, I have taken all the medicine I can right now, and it still hurts. I guess there is nothing left to do but go lie down and try not to think about it. Maybe I will go read a book.

I sprained the thing in July playing baseball and it took something like 4 months to totally feel better again. I hope this isn't one of those again...

Remembering the Challenger

20 years ago today, the Challenger space shuttle blew up. I remember being in school, at lunch, and the vice principal came in telling people the shuttle blew up. None of us believed him. In class a little later, the TV was turned on and we wanted the news a little. At home, all that was on TV the rest of the day was the explosion and people talking about it.

I don't really remember much else except my fasination with the whole thing. The fact that a piece of rubber could have caused the explosion was amazing to me.

We have a teacher who had applied to be the first teacher in space. That's all he said to us in the halls that day, that he could have been on the shuttle.

The engineering I do is all about servers, making them perform well, maintaining them, securing them, and repairing them when necessary. I think if I had a job where I designed something, or was in charge of QA testing of something, then later someone died because of my not getting the job done, I would seriously look for new work. (Not trying to say anything about those people, just about me. I have no idea what happened to those engineers.) For me, it's not like all the students will drop out of school and transfer up the road just because they can't check their email or register for classes on some particular day...

State tax refund - We blew the whole wad.

Already you say? It only took us 10 hours? Yes it's true, it's all gone.

We spent $500 at the grocery store. Most of it was food storage, we are all stocked up again. The rest of it got spent on Walmart on things we didn't necessarily have to get. We now have a new dresser and a grandfather clock. Lots of other stuff was also bought.

Anyway, the rest of it is gone, easy come, easy go. (Federal taxes was much larger than State, we'll have to see how fast that goes.)

State Tax return - check.

State taxes are back. Just like I thought the schedule would be. If things work out, federal taxes will be back tomorrow, a total of 5 days from start to finish...

Book Report

Dean & Me (A love story) by Jerry Lewis

This book is about the 10 years Jerry Lewis and Dean Martin we a team. Jerry Lewis talks about the things they did, the things that lead ot their breakup, and how eventually they ended up renewing their friendship.

Basically, these guys met on the street corner in New York City. Their act consisted of Deam Martin singing songs, and Jerry Lewis going absolutely crazy. Their success (and egos, I think) really ended up breaking things up. The critics were always saying it was Jerry Lewis with all the talent, and that also contributed.

This book was an interesting book, but it had quite a bit of language in it.

"Neither Rain nor Sleet nor Snow nor Dark of Night" will get us to serve you better.

For Christmas, the Stake Presidency sends out Christmas Cards. This year, they made square cards. I took a couple to the post office see what the postage would be, they told me there would be a 12 cent added charge for the square shape because the cards would not go through their machines. They had to hand sort them. (None of the cards were even being sent out of the zip code!) On top of that, they didn't sell a 12 cent stamp, I could get a regular stamp, and ten cent stamp, and a 2 cent stamp. I asked them about metering them, they said they could do the ones I had, I told them I had 200 to do. Their reply was that they couldn't meter that many. (I didn't want to get 600 stamps.)

I told the Stake President that I was thinking about deliviering the cards myself. Then I heard that it's "illegal to put something in the mailbox if it's not mailed." This is what really set me off.

I decided I didn't need a mailbox. I figured that if someone REALLY wanted to get something to me, they would figure out how to do it some other way than USPS. I was going to go home (this was at work), take my mailbox off the house, drive down to the post office, and return it. My plan was to tell them I didn't need the mailbox anymore, and they could keep the junk mail they keep sending me. (It should have helped them cut costs, right? What I don't see is why they needed to raise the price of stamps again...) I buy something at the store, affix it to my house, and suddenly it becomes property of a division of the US government? I build one myself, affix it to my house, and suddenly I can't say what goes into it? That would have also stopped the mailman from cutting across our lawn, he is cutting a path in it and doesn't seem to care.

Tara did not let me take the mailbox off the house. She also doesn't want me making something that looks just like a mailbox, but is labeled "Non-mail box" on the inside. She does want me telling the Post Office to stop sticking my mail in the non-mail box. I don't know, I still want to do it.

Dear valued customer, we have rejected your claim...

My insurance uses a prescription benfits program from a company that will remain nameless. (Their intials are M.E.D.C.O.) One of the prescriptions I use comes from a compounding pharmacy, who bills me, not my insurance. (They say it's to keep costs down.) I have to turn around and sumbit a claim to the insurance, who eventually sends me a check for 2/3 of my cost.

This last time I submitted the forms, and mailed them in. At the beginning of the week, I got a letter back that said they denied my claim. It looks like they entered my birthdate in wrong and decided I was not covered. The letter said I could make necessary corrections, then send it in, or I could call my customer service representatiive.

I called them on Monday, the people could not find the claim. (They said they were not the claims department.) I asked about talking to the claims department and was told they didn't have that number. (It's not listed anywhere. I looked.) They told my best bet was to fill out the forms again, and get it right this time. (Can anyone guess my reaction to this answer?)

I called yesterday, and they still couldn't find the pending claim. I asked about talking to the claims department, they said that they could have them call me. I gave my number, they said it would be 24 to 48 working hours before they called back, and hung up. (Sometime between Monday and Thurday of next week...)

I gave up, made the corrections, and mailed the things back in. We'll see if I "got it right this time", or if I have to go through it all again.

Normally in this sort of situation, I would normally go on some sort of tirade about how we're stuck with this company, what options do we have, etc. I would likely do something annoying (to Tara, my coworker, or the company) to make a point. (More on this in the next post, I'll talk about the US Post office.) I don't really want to get to a point where they refuse to cover my prescriptions, so I will be (mostly) quiet. Hopefully I get my reimbursement back before I have to refill the prescription.

I'm awake now...

I slept a long time last night. I took the apnea machine off last night for the first time since I bumped the pressure up. Tara says I kept opening my mouth last night. Maybe I need to lower the pressure to 11.5, I don't know. I'll wait until it happens again.

On nights when I use the machine all night, I only need 7 hours of sleep. On nights when I don't use it, if I don't get 9 or 10 hours of sleep, I'm exhausted. (So I slept in this morning.)

There's no sign of the tax returns yet. I couldn't remember this year if it's Utah that does their returns on Thursdays and the Feds on Fridays, but I think that's how it works. Our efile was accepted 2 days ago, I thought there was a possibility of having them back this week. Maybe the federal return will come tomorrow.

Does anyone know how they do it? Do they just stick all the returns into some table in a database, then start a batch job to process as many as they can at night? If so, I would imagine finishing your taxes early each year would get you a return quicker each time. (If I owed, I would wait until April 15th to pay...) The earlier you get it done, the less returns there are to process, and the more likely you are to get it quicker. It seems like they both accepted our return last year on a Friday, and we had the returns the next week. I don't know. The website says wait 10 days to 3 weeks if you efile and use direct deposit, but since we have been doing it, (this is our 4th year...) 2 weeks was the longest we had to wait.

HPUX CSE exam is coming

I emailed the HP certified people on Friday asking about the HPUX CSE Networking and Security exam. I passed the first half of the exam in October, I have been waiting for them to write and release the second half. (It will likely be a difficult exam...) Anyhow, they emailed me back and told me I can expect to see it by the end of this month. Good news, but I haven't even looked over the exam topics, to see where I need to study to plug any holes. (My bet is that they have NIS on the exam, we have never run it here, I have never used it. Same with HP IDS.) The book for the different exams on the core is 1600 pages, the parts I need to look through total about 600 pages. I have started reviewing it. Another reason I am motivated is that someone at work studied for a month and went out and took the HPUX CSA exam, which is the one I have held for 5 years. (I thought it was pretty easy at the time...) He doesn't actually do anything involved with the OS, really, but he took the exam. I just can't see staying on the same certification level as him, and there is no way in the world he will be able to pass the CSE just by studying. (Unless he's one of those photographic memory people, which I doubt based on the amount of email he used to print out and save for future reference.) Anyhow, he's provided extra motivation.

I am also reading a book called "Joseph Smith - Rough Stone Rolling". It's interesting, but it seems to read kind of slow. I am reading a book called "The Planets", (self describing) and a book called "Dean & Me (A Love Story)" by Jerry Lewis.

Coming home tonight, I wondered why I was reading 4 books at once. It's not like I don't have anything else to do.

I figure it's because I am starting to feel better in general. (I got a larger dose of thyroid medicine yesterday.) Added to that, at work I have been working on a number of different things at once, and sometimes it's hard to stop thinking about it. At least when I read a book I can fill one of the lanes of that multi track I have in my head. If the TV is on, or I am walking somewhere, and another is taken up. Anyhow, that might not be it at all, maybe I just shook something loose again and need to ingest a large amount of information. I don't think it's the fact that it's winter now, I sometimes do it in the summer.

On my web browser, I have 9 different sites as my home pages. (Another plug for firefox here.) A couple of them are for work, 4 of them are pages in the forums, just so I can see what people are posting, if a topic is interesting I will follow it all day. (I use the Firefox "refresh every" extension to reload the pages for me every couple of minutes. Yet another plug for firefox.) Anyhow, at work, some of those things keep me busy. (In addition to the large number of things I do at work.)

I try to keep these posts fairly short, now look what I have done.

Anyway, I have these 4 books to read, then 4 more lined up right behind them. If you have book suggestions, I think I'm open to them. (Unless I have read them already.)

Changing the timestamp

So I figured out how to change the timestamp on this blog. I wasn't able to change anything to Nov 5, 1955, but I was able to change to Dec 31, 1999. Anyhow, I can now add the old livejournal entries onto blogspot. You will now see the entries listed from Aug 2005-Nov 2005 in the archive, if you want to go back over them.

In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes. What does it mean when your tax liability is zero?

In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes. - Ben Franklin

I just submitted our taxes tonight. Last year we got $3500 back, I raised our number of exemptions by 3 hoping to reduce our refund. It didn't really work. This year we get a bundle back also. Don't bother asking for it, it's earmarked...

A good chunk of it goes to bills. (like always, right?) Tara is getting $300 spending cash, I am getting $300 spending cash. (I am getting a nice framed picture out of the distribution center, a miter saw, Superman the animated series - season 2, and maybe not much else. I'm sure I thought of something I wanted to get, but I have forgotten again.) We need to get a tune-up, safety and emissions, and registration done on the car. Past that, we are doing food storage, new car seats, maybe a new dresser or two, and I was thinking of having the girls pick something they really wanted. (Mary really wants Wonder Woman season 2.) The rest is being saved for "Vacation 2006".

Anyway, hopefully the returns come back soon, then let the spending begin!

Another quote from Ben Franklin - He that is of the opinion money will do everything may well be suspected of doing everything for money.

I'm not trying to do everything, it's just nice to have a little to spare once in a while.

That thing still squeaks

I used the gazelle tonight. I only used it for 15 minutes. Back in the day (last winter) I went 30 minutes minimun, but I figured 15 minutes was a good start. Besides that, the thing still squeaks. I need to oil it again. But at least I used it. Now that I'm typing this, I think maybe it could have been the dryer squeaking.

Anyway, I ran out of thyroid medicine, and didn't take it Sunday or this morning. I was pretty 'cloudy' most of the last 2 days. They finally called tonight, and upped the script. I now take 2 grains twice a day, so I took one tonight, I feel much better now. I figure 15 minutes is good, I didn't want to push my luck while I was feeling ok for the furst time in 2 days.

2006 Goal Update - 22 Jan

This update is happening now, I may be very busy tomorrow. There is a lot to do, and I still haven't even talked to my home teaching families this month yet. On the up side, everyone seems well enough to finally all go to church together again. I haven't been to priesthood in over a month.

1: Move up on ITRC forums. I am currently at 3357 points. (48 points this week) This leaves me at number 156 on the list. (Some jumps in slots take more points than others, it just depends on the distribution. I am still well ahead of schedule.)

2: Mission Journal - No progress made. Not a lot of time tomorrow, it likely won't get started.

3: Garden Retaining Wall - Spring 2006

4: 6 Wooden Chairs - Spring 2006

5: Weight - 221 right now. The Doughnuts ans Soda team was #2 on the list. (Average weight loss...) I spent 2 hours helping someone move, they had a lot of stairs. Maybe I'll go down more...

6: Gazelle - I thought about using this, but so far, I figured I have gotten excersize in other ways. I walked to work a couple of days this week, it snowed on Thursday, I spend 1.5 hours shoveling. Today I helped someone move.

7: Vacation - "Human Right's Day" - Age of Empires day was pretty fun. I think Drew and Tom would agree I taught them a lesson or two....

Wasting time update - 299 badges at MSN games.

Pictures on a blog? What's up with that.

I was told today my blog is too boring. There were no pictures. (Funny, Emma said the same thing yesterday about the book I was reading, but she's only 2.)

Here it is, the very first picture on this blog:



What do you think?

Book Report

It's Superman! by Tom Dehaven

There are not a lot of novels based on comic books, and there are not a lot of good novels based on comic books, but this one does ok.

The book is set in the Great Depression. (The Golden Age of comics.) It deals with Clark Kent deciding to be Superman, Lois Lane becoming a reporter (And CLark, for that matter), and Lex Luthor becoming a rich criminal.

The book doesn't follow the traditional story for these three, and that probibly is what makes it work.

The author does a very good job with the setting. The book feels like it's set in the Depression.

There were only 2 problems with the book: First, a number of people are killed in the book. Second, I stayed up until 2:30 this morning reading it, and I am very tired now.

Continued fallout from last week's outage.

Yesterday we had a meeting reviewing the outage on Friday. The prevaling thought was excellent work was done getting things running for them in a timely manner. All email I have recieved to date indicates EVERY is Very happy. (I would think they would have been happy had the outage never happened, but maybe they would have been blissfully ignorant. Maybe they figure since it happened, they were happy we were back.)

Anyway, the DBA's asked me to come to a meeting yesterday about our upgrade on the 29th. I totally forgot about it this morning. They were doing a potluck breakfast. I forgot this morning, there was 5 inches of snow on the ground, and I got carried away shoveling this morning... They called me and asked me to come to the meeting.

I came, and the first order of business was for them to thank me for working the miracle I did. To further thank me for this and the work I do for them all the time, they gave me a $35 Ruby River gift certificate. (They said I saved their bacon, so they figured they would give me some bacon back.)

This is a very good thing. I always start to salivate when I drive past that place. Their New York Steak is good, good, good. I've been thinking about it all afternoon.

Google PageRank.

I've talked about this before. (Not here.) It's driving me crazy again. Do you have the google taskbar? pagerank drives me crazy. I think sometimes people cheat their way into a high page rank. Google gives a pagerank to each site you visit.

My home pages:

HP ITRC Forums - 3 out of 10
Stake and Wards login - unavailable
BYU home page - 7 out of 10
blogspot - 7 out of 10
HP SIM - unavailable

Other pages I have noticed:

cnn.com - 9 out of 10
abcnews.go.com - 9 out of 10
espn.com - 8 out of 10
ksl.com - 6 out of 10
lds.org - 7 out of 10
zone.msn.com - 7 out of 10
www.tvguide.com - 7 out of 10
pbs.org - 9 out of 10

So I am thinking to myself, what does it take to get a 10 out of 10?

www.google.com - 10 out of 10
www.yahoo.com - 9 out of 10
www.apple.com/quicktime - 10 out of 10
www.apple.com/trailers - 9 out of 10

http://www.webworkshop.net/pagerank.html Interesting, very interesting.

I fell off the (diet) wagon

Or maybe I was pushed....

I got talked into going to the Cannon Center for lunch today. The conversation went something like this:

Karl: "John - I'm hungry." (while rubbing his stomach)
Me: "So am I, but I only have 3 dollars." (The fact that I am doing the Weight Loss Challenge has already slipped my mind.)
Karl: "I have plenty. Are you in?"
I grab my coat.

Now, I didn't have breakfast or lunch yesterday. For dinner I had pasta, and I didn't have breakfast today. EVERYTHING looked good at the Cannon Center. I ate too much. Then I had dessert. Then I had little more dessert. I have to do more walking.

(I did walk to work this morning, I did walk over to the Cannon Center, I plan to walk home, and I will be much to full for dinner before Stake Presidency meeting, but somehow I don't think it will make up for it.)

Hello everyone

Welcome to everyone who are responding to the email I sent out.

Today I was on-call, that means a day in the data center. It wasn't too bad, but the operations staff seemed confused about everything they were talking about. I think they had the wrong idea at least once an hour today.

I went to the doctor today, I told him "it hurts when I do this", and he told me not to do it anymore. Not really, but after the last time I got stung by a hornet, after my trip to the hospital, I got sent to him. The only thing he told me was "try not to get stung anymore." When Tara was delivering Ruth, he almost missed it because we had M*A*S*H* on the TV, and he was watching that instead of the baby. (I turned the TV off.) He told me I could play with the settings on my BiPap machine. I have wanted to for 2 weeks, ever since I found the provider manual. For the next couple nights, I am trying a pressure of 12 over 8.5. We will see how that goes. (I think I still wake up once or twice a night.)

The girls got their Christmas presents from their Grandma today. All the sweaters fit. Tara was so impressed, she is thinking about asking how to knit things when she goes to Buffalo in June.

I think my W-2 is lost. They sent them out a week ago, everyone in my building has theirs but me. I'm not really ready for taxes anyway, I guess it's ok.

Today was the first day that team "Doughnuts and Soda" gets going. It looks like we just ended up with 3 of us, the other two guys went to the gym today. I did not.

Book Report

Descartes' Secret Notebook by Amir D. Aczel

I know the question you are asking. Is this a book about Math or a book about Philosophy? The answer is yes. If you don't know, Descartes was a French philosopher and mathmatician. This book is about a notebook Descarte had which was written in a secret code. The author presents items and events in Descartes life that caused him to write like that.

It turns out that Descartes was extreamely afraid of the Incusition. He is credited with starting the field of analytic geometry, and he merged geometry with algebra. He invented the cartesian coordinates (The x- y- z- axis grid system...) Some of his work in geometry supported the Coperican Universe, to which the Catholic church was opposed. (Violently.)

It turns out that Descartes thought he could eventually unify all knowledge. (science, he did it with Geometry and Algebra, why not everything?) The secret notebook contained his work that could have started the field of topology. He discovered Euler's theorem 100 years before Euler, but kept it a secret.

Anyway, it's an interesting book, it does a good job describing life in Descartes day, and many of the things Decartes did and discovered.

January 2006

2006 Goal Update - 15 Jan

1: Move up on ITRC forums. I am currently at 3309 points. (69 points this week) That moves me up 5 slots to 156 on the list.

2: Mission Journal - No progress made. No excuse for it, either.

3: Garden Retaining Wall - Spring 2006

4: 6 Wooden Chairs - Spring 2006

5: Weight - 222 right now. The Wellness program "weight Loss Challenge" start on Tuesday. (I have been not trying on purpose so I have a little room to shrink for the contest. We made a team called "Doughnuts and Soda"...

6: Gazelle - This was set up a couple of days ago. I haven't used it yet, but it's set up.

7: Vacation - Memorial Day, 2006. Tomorrow, Tom, Drew and I are playing Age of Empires III to celebrate "Human Rights Day".

Wasting time update - 289 badges at MSN games. (I started a couple of new games there this week.)

Sometimes work is glad that I am here

Our main DB server went down at 11am this morning. As of right now it appears to be a HW problem, but we can't get the machine to fess up to what the problem is.

I moved the DB's to a different machine for them, we were back up at 3:30pm. Everyone's pretty happy at this point. After the HW is repaired, I will either reinstall the machine or not. Then tomorrow night we need to move all the DB's back.

I knew people were worried when the CIO showed up in the data center.

It's alive!

My laptop is working! Most parts were replaced. The techs working on it were heard to say "We can fix it. We have the technology. We can make it better than it was before..."

The keyboard is flat, the thing runs at 1.6Ghz, everything looks like it is running.

They are talking about purchasing $4000 laptops at this point. It has all kinds of stuff.

Stake Directory is done! (So may be my laptop.)

I finished the update of the Stake Directory. All the wards changed meeting times, so that took the most work updating. Now I can worry about other things.

They went to replace the system board on my laptop today, and snapped something off the chassis. They are not sure when the macine will be fixed if ever. I took my hard drive from them, at least now I have all my files, I am running on Linux again, etc. They ordered the new laptops, hopefully they come soon.

I signed up for the Wellness program "weight loss challenge" at work today. Our team name is 'Doughnuts and Soda'. We'll see how it goes.

Speaking of Lunch...

Was I speaking of lunch?

For lunch we went to the Cannon Center. The main course was sweet and sour pork. This was not tempting me at all. I figured they would have the burger bar open, and I could get a hamburger. They didn't, and I couldn't. They had Italian chicken, the person making it did it upside down and made a mess. Is that the way they eat them in Italy? Maybe it explains a few things.

The minestrone soup was good, and I had hash browns with chili on top. I washed it all down with a pile of mixed vegetables and vanilla custard, but not at the same time.

It was a good thing I had lunch. I started walking home from work, had plenty of time before I had to be at the Stake Center, and decided that I was close enough to the library and had enough time to stop. I ended up walking out of there with about 6 books, a Superman book on CD, and a Superfriends DVD. My backpack was very heavy the rest of the way home, and I only had time to change clothes and leave again.

Stake meetings went almost to 11pm. The Stake President kept getting more and more behind. I must have knocked on his door a hundred times trying to get him to finish up. I even sent people in and told them I would knock when their time was up. They finally came out 25 minutes after I started knocking, thinking it was hilarious. Anyway, the lunch made up for the lack of dinner.

It's not dead yet, oh wait, yes it is

Parts came for my laptop today. They were here late in the morning. I almost got excited. I spent part of the morning installing things on the loaner that I needed to do my job, the other half of the morning missing the and while I was typing because the keyboard is so much smaller than I am used to.

Anyway, I went up after lunch to see about the machine, it was sitting on the desk all put together. I asked about it, they said they replaced the parts, and turned it on, it worked for a couple of seconds, then it died again and wouldn't come on again. They ordered a new system board. (I would have ordered the system board from the start, myself, but what do I know?) The system board will be here in 2 days, "tomorrow if I'm lucky". I just hope it boots up again. I was looking for a couple of files today on my usb drive (I had done a backup 2 months ago of important docs), and the file I really needed was too old and useless.

I ended up installing Microsoft Word and Microsoft Excel on the machine after I got tired of wordpad. (It only took 83 seconds.) Tomorrow I may break down and install OpenOffice on the loaner if things drive me crazy enough.

Beth (Office 'assistant') is going to order the new laptops (she is calling them 'mobile workstations' for some reason) tomorrow. They should be here in three weeks.

The Wellness program on campus is doing a 6 week weight loss challenge. I was thinking about asking Beth to be on my team (She is something like 7 or 8 months pregnant), but I figured I should wait until I have the new laptop in my hands before I make her mad at me...

RoadTrip 2006 - update

So Rob is out. He only plans on going to Missouri this year, no where else.

Tara decided last night it might be nice to head over to Buffalo for a visit. At this point we are looking at leaving Memorial Day and heading out. Tara would stay for a month or so, I'd go back to work, come at the end of June, then we would head back. Tom is interested in coming with us, we are in negotiations with Kaylyn to see if she will drive out with us, or if she will fly out later.

So right now we are talking about driving to Omaha on Memorial Day, spending Tuesday at the Omaha Zoo, driving to Chicago on Wednesday, catching a Cubs game that night, and driving to Buffalo Thursday. (If we leave early Wednesday morning, it's something like a 7 hour drive to Chicago, but we have to get to the NorthEast side...) Not necessarily a small road trip, but from Buffalo we can get to NYC, and maybe Baltimore.

Tara's only concern is that I don't hurt myself while they are gone.

The day the laptop died

Today is the day my laptop died. More to the point, it looks like my video card died. It makes it a little hard to use the laptop. I had to do 'first day of school' server monitoring from a 3 year old laptop normally used for configuring switches. It wasn't all that fun, but I did get to take my laptop completely apart and put it back together again. (And I didn't even have any pieces left over when I was done.) It takes 2 working days for Dell to get the new parts in, so I have a little laptop to use until then. They had Windows installed, but didn't install any ethernet drivers. I don't know exactly what they were expecting me to do with a machine that can't get a network connection, but it's working now...

At this point, they aren't sure if the new laptop will be here before the old one is fixed, but one way or another, things should be fixed in a couple of days. (Including the previously explained processor spedd flapping.)

2006 Goal Update

1: Move up on the ITRC Forums - Up to 3240 points now. Unless someone else went nuts this week, that move me up a slot to 161 on the list.

2: Mission Journal - No progress made yet. This week's outlook - not good. I have to get the Stake Directory updated by Wednesday for distribution.

3: Garden Retaining Wall - Not until Spring

4: 6 Wooden Chairs - Not until Spring

5: Weight - I weighed in at 221 today.

6: Gazelle - The dust has not been removed. I was sick this week, and spent a LOT of time in my chair.

7: Vacation - Dies sick time count?

Wasting Time update: 273 badges at MSN Games.

How to waste time - one method

I haven't been feeling well this week. I had pink eye, then got some sort of chest cold/sore throat. At this point I am feeling 'almost' all the way better.

So what have I been doing this week? I have been wasting time. The only useful things I did this week was one day of work from home, Stake Presidency meeting on Wednesday, and reinstalling a computer for Drew today.

Other than those things, I have been sitting in my chair playing computer games. Drew brought over Age of Empires 3, I played that for 2 days straight. This morning my laptop started the old 1600Mhz/600Mhz processor speed flapping problem, the game really didn't work all that well. (And I couldn't get the laptop to stop.) Otherwise, it would have been 3 straight days of AoE3, and Drew's machine may not have gotten reinstalled.

The other place I play computer games is the MSN Games section. They have this fairly new thing where they have a badge album for the badges you earn playing games. Usually it's easy to earn a couple of badges in the games, harder after that. I currently have 272 badges in my badge album, in about 10 weeks of collecting them.

Drew took back his game today, and I don't plan on being in my chair all weekend...

2006 Goals

Here are some 2006 goals I am making up on the spot.

#1 - Move back into the top 100 posters on the HP ITRC forums. I went as high as 108 once on the forums, I have not had a lot of time to post answers on the forums lately. I am currently at 162 on the list. Currently, the person at 100 on the list has 4519 points assigned. I currently have 3222 points. If no one moves besides me, I would need 1297 more points to be at position 100. (for those who are subtraction-impaired.) I figure I need somewhere around 1500 points or so. Thats 125 points per month. Not an unattainable goal. What am I talking about? http://forums.itrc.hp.com Some of the guys on the top of the list really don't have anything else to do.

#2 - Finish my mission journal. It's been sitting at 220 pages for almost 5 months now. I have a ways to go, but it needs to get finished and published. (I was thinking some sort of nice paper in a hardcover bound format. It might be a tiny bit expensive to do, but I will only do 2 copies...)

#3 - Finish the garden retaining wall. I need 2 more pallets of block to finish, sometime this spring

#4 - Make 6 wooden chairs for outside the house. 2 large, 4 small.

#5 - Get down to somewhere in the 200-210 pound weight. I've weighed less in the past 10 years, but I think this is good for me. (The post gall bladder removal, post broken ankle era.) I've been at 225 for about a year.

#6 - Start using the Gazelle again. I haven't used this since June 9th. It's partly related to #5, but it can be separate...

#7 - Take some vacation trips. See some people. Relax.

That's all I've got off the top of my head right now. That should keep me plenty busy. I will post updates fromtime to time here. (stay Tuned.)

Have I mentioned that my spacebar does not work consistantly?

I am suposedly getting a new laptop in the next week or so. Mine has a number of problems. I have had the system board replaced 4 times in the 2 years I have had it. One of the times, it was shocking me every time I touched it. Then I gave me a REALLY good shock and the sound went out. I had Dell send someone out, some knuclehead came and spent 5 hours replacing the thing. He had to get another computer, and log into Dell's site so he could go step-by-step through it.

The last time it broke, I was holding it by the tab that shuts the laptop, and the tab broke. The laptop went tumbling across the room. The wireless went out. This time, I didn't want the Forrest Gump coming back to work on it, so I had one of our department CSR's take care of it. He only spent 90 minutes replacing the wireless and the system board.

He didn't get the case on right. I have a nice little warp in it along the 0-P-L-.- line. I use my right thumb for the spacebar exclusively, (I didn't go to typing school, I am self taught.) and sometimes it doesn't quite get hit hard enough to register. Mostly it happens after I have been using a different keyboard.

It took me 6 weeks after the repair to get the thing to run at 1.6 Ghz again. It was running at 600 Mhz. Part of getting that fixed involved me doing something to my Windows installation inside VMWAre so that anytime I open something that involves audio or video, and Windows crashes. It's kind of fun. We were in the office about 10 days ago making fun of the Windows guy, (who runs Linux on his laptop like the rest of us, by the way) and he was telling us that at least we don't see the "blue screen of death" as much anymore. I said "Oh, yeah?" and proceeded to show him how I could create it at will. He chalcked it up to a Unix guy running Windows, and I won't dispute that, I just think it's funny. Anyway, the "Office Assistant" in our building came around to talk about laptops, I told her my story, and I am first on the list.

I guess the moral of the story is: Use me to do you Unix/Linux sysadmin, but don't let me touch your windows servers, laptops, desktops, etc. My track record with laptops is especially bad, the one before this got root beer dumped in it, it was never the same after that. I feel sorry for the student who got it after me, or the person who bought it at the Surplus sale...

Happy New Year, and I need t o drink more water.

Happy New Year! Is anyone out there? If so, I hope 2006 is better than 2005. Not that 2005 was necessarily bad for you, but things can always get better, right?

When I'm at work, I drink plenty of water. I have a 32 ounce water bottle, and a 24 ounce water bottle there. Lately, I have been drinking 2 of the 32 ounce bottles a day. Add that to the water I end up getting during the day, and I am getting plenty.

On the weekend, I don't get as much water in me. It shouldn't be all that much harder, but I don;t have a water bottle sitting directly in front of me at home. As a result, I get a little thirstly by the end of the weekend. Weekends like this are 'long', so there are more days. Then when I work from home on the front or back end of a long weekend, (or both), I get even less water.

New Year's resolution #1 - drink more water at home.

I took the Christmas decorations down tonight. I was going to wait until tomorrow, (the long weekend...) but then I decided it would be easier to get everything put away properly if the girls were not involved. Now instead of helping me take down the Christmas decorations, they can helpme finish cleaning the house. Luccky them.

I finished the Book of Mormon yesterday, completed it before "the end of the year". I started late, and some would say I cut it close, I prefer to say it was timed just right. Anyway, Tara wantedto go last Monday to get a treat for finishing (She read it outloud to the girls, they finished last Sunday.), but we didn't. It was partly because I hadn't finished yet, it was mostly because the girls were all in the car screaming at us because they were so tired.

Tara's brother got a new scale that also measures your body fat and water percentage. I used it,it told me I was 30% body fat, and only 50% water. He is a half inch taller than me, and 45 pounds lighter, it told him he was 30% body fat and 50% water. I'mpretty sure neither of us are 30% body fat, and I'm fairly confident that I do not have 45 pounds more muscle than he does, even if he is sort of bean-pole-ish.