Palm Reading

My wife reluctantly told me that her PDA (an IBM Workpad...a Palm Vx clone) would not power on and she thought that she lost all her data. She does sync it with the PC, but not as often as I would. I took it and put it on the charger and let it stay there 24 hours and then powered it on. Some of the menu features worked but not all of them. It appeared that the digitizer was way off and it was not possible to get it working. I did hard reset and then a restore and all appears well. I had installed a program on the PDA that allows EVERY data base to be backed up rather than the default ones. While it takes a long time to restore, you get ALL your programs back and the data. I was pleased with the outcome. I hope my wife is.

You may be asking why a Palm Vx. For what my wife uses it for, it is the best for her. She needs little more than contacts, calendar, and to do lists, but she can play chess as well keep an electronic Bible on it. 8 Megs of RAM and a 20 mhz processor is plenty. One of the best features is the heft of it. It is very sturdy as well as sleek.

Interesting Day

Today started like most Thursday morning do up to and including my weekly Escalation Mgmt meeting. One of the normally more animated attendees was not present so the meeting lasted only about 30 minutes instead of the normal 60. Also during the meeting, one of the members, who is usually rather polite, decided to go to the global mgr with a complaint, then decided to air it during the meeting. I wished he would have come to me first, but he didn't and we can't change the past. The good news is that there were no repercussions because the issue in question was already solved. I had asked him to follow up on the issue if it flared up again (and it did not). He was upset that I e-mailed him regarding this instead of calling him. The irony of it was that he had been up all night and had I called him, he would not have been very pleasant. In the end I apologized to him and the global mgr sided with me and my methods and all is well. It still bothers me a tad that he did what did, but the past is the past.

The temperature slowly dropped all day long and the rain eventually became sleet, then snow. Not that we have anything to show for it, but it is very cold (wind chill about 15 degree F). Walking the dog when I got home was not fun.

I opened my first regional escalation today at work. Opening one is step one of runnign a full fledge escalation and I think I did okay. I am sure one of the Esc Mgrs will have comments, but I think I can handle him :) .

The issue was a little convoluted but we finally ironed out what needed to be done. The thing that amazes me is the fact that the customer that demanded this be opened is happy that we will not have any info to work with for at least a week and no solution for at least 3-4. Some escalation :)

Talk About Extremes!

Yesterday it was 75 degrees. Today it is 31. Nothing like a 44 degree variance to get your blood pumping. The locals are freaking out and it is not even bad yet.

Since I do not trust the other drivers, I will be going home early, but not before I host a confcall for an escalation that I am managing. It is not high severity, but the customer wants it escalated nontheless.

Did you hear that you can get a copy if MS Vista Business FREE? I have completed my requirements...all I need to do now is wait. I know I am a Linux geek, but if it is free, I will bite.

A Call From A Soldier

I got a call from our son today. I was a bit worried when I saw the country code in the caller ID (+965) because I did not recognize it. It was from our son's Kuwait cell phone. I was surprised how clear the call was (once he moved into a better area) and the fact that the delay was minimal.

We talked for about 40 minutes or so, discussing everything from the weather to work. He said that things are not too bad right now (he is not in a combat area yet) and he is enjoying he experience for the most part. He did comment on how sand seems to get into everything though...he said that is annoying.

I asked him again if there was anything we could send him in a care package and he only asked for two things: peanut butter flavored Power Bars and a "Learn German" CD set. He already understands German pretty well, but he has not been able to use it in about 2 years, so he wants a refresher course. I guess I need to go online and find one for him. He wants CD only if possible.

He seemed in good spirits when we talked and told me his promotion will be official very soon. I was happy to hear that. The military seems to be agreeing with him and as long as he is happy, I am happy.

I asked him if he had visited my blog and he told me no, that he went to my regular web page, so the visitor I had that I thought was him wasn't. Oh well, I am sure he will get to it later.

He told me that he is trying to get his leave set up for March/April if he can and while on leave he has several places he wants to visit. He wants to go to Germany for a few days and then come to the states to visit us and his grandmother. It is a lot to cram into 14 days, but if anyone can do it, he can.

No Mistake

Look at the weather for Nov 29 and 30 as well as for Dec 1. Freaky. I may stay home...not because of the cold, but because I don't trust those driving around me!

Makes Sense To Me

Corel Office to start supporting the OpenDocument format. Wow, what a concept. Okay Microsoft, your turn. it is a standard used by 11 million + people and will continue to increase. MS supporting this is a way for my dream to come true. Create a document in one program and have the ability to open/edit it in a number of others or even in a different OS. We can do that with jpg, txt, csv and many other formats...why must the single most used productivity formats be proprietary? MS still would make a ton of money from corporations that will keep using the standardized MS software, but more and more people will be able to share documents no matter what office software or OS created it.

Smart move, Corel. All we need to do now is have MS embrace this so we will be more unified in our standards.

Yo, Adrian...Faith And Values?

This story is one that I find very interesting. I had no idea this was brewing. Of course a million bad jokes come to mind, but I want to say that if Sly Stallone, a one time porn star, can see the light and be sincere, then...AMEN!

"Faith and Values" movies are on the rise. While the liberal crowd will try to hide it, people are interested in Christianity. Maybe it is because that they don't understand it and want to, maybe they are finally realizing that something out there is in control, and it ain't us. You cannot look at all the things around you and think, "Yeah, this all was just chance" and if you do, I would love for you to explain why you think that. Evolution is a theory...it has not been proven. Macro evolution has to some degree, but you cannot prove I evolved from an ape which evolved from a fish which evolved from a bit of goo. That is just my humble opinion.

BoT, Sly, thank you for speaking up. Do the right thing and hit the Bible and study it. Learn why we believe what we believe. There is a rich history there just waiting to be read.

Free, As In Beer.

Knightmare had a pretty good post on his blog the other day and it really made me think. I understand his concern about Linux "zealots" (we call them 'fanboys' here) and share it to some degree. However he has made a statement that I do not agree with and it may be semantics so if it is please forgive me.

He mentions the labeling of things as 'non-free' and it appears that his bothers him. The word 'free' in the software world has several meanings and when we are talking about 'open source' software and GPL software, people have to be careful how the term is used. I know be cause I have been corrected on this myself.

When a company offers you software for free, it is free as in "free beer". What I mean by that is you can consume all you want and the person who gives you the free beer can cut you off whenever they like, so you enjoy it while you can. Many pieces of software are handled this way to get people interested in it. 'Freeware' as we are used to seeing it in the Windows world is usually this. Adobe Reader as an example is 'freeware'.

Now the 'free' that the Linux community (the GPL people specifically) is concerned with is "gratis", free as in 'free speech'. It is given without any strings attached. You can include it in distributions, decompile it, alter it and in some cases, sell it. Now if we use Adobe Reader as an example as we did earlier, we cannot: decompile it, alter it, or sell it at all. Adobe holds the copyrights to it. Evince, for example is 'gratis', do with it what you please.

Now the Linux purists are upset that certain companies will not release source code to drivers. The reason they are upset is that they think that certain softwares should be free. The OS and hardware drivers are core for this and the purists think this should be made available to them. If they want to stop offering their support for Ubuntu, then so be it. Ubuntu is trying to bring Linux to the masses and if that means using 'free' (as in beer) drivers, I do not mind. It will make certain things easier on all of us. However I stand by the choice to used the language 'free' and' non-free'. It tells me a lot about the software I am using To be fair, most Debian distros have repositories for this. They usually will give you the disclaimer that the software will not always be 100% free to use any way you want, but if you are just installing it and have no plans on recompiling or repackaging it.


Another area that we have to be careful in is copyright infringement. Micorsoft I am sure pays royalties to include the codecs and drivers they bundle with Windows. If a company does not pay these royalties, then they cannot legally package them with their product. One interesting news item that comes to mind is Microsoft and Adobe. For the past several years, many freeware utilities offered the ability to export to pdf format. Mind you they could not allow editing of the pdf's, but they could offer the ability to export because they were not charging for that and if they did, they were paying royalties to Adobe. MS Office has never had the ability export to pdf because they refused to pay Adobe royalties and they also wanted to have the ability to edit the pdf's. That has changed somewhat with Office 2007, which now offers a free download to allow you to save your word docs as pdf's. Way to go Microsoft! You finally caught up to the rest of the world.

Also, ever wonder why you find freeware to edit a pdf file DIRECTLY? That is because Adobe has a patent on that. If you want to edit a pdf, you have to export it to an editor make the changes and export it back. Hmmm double exporting...I wonder how much of the original formatting is lost... :-)

Yep, Knightmare has really dug in with his testing and I am proud of him. With a little more research he will be a good person to go to with basic Linux questions. He has already answered some of mine regarding issues that I have never delved into, so when when I am ready to dive into those areas, his blog will be used as a resource.

Thanx, Duck.

Here Comes The Rain Again...

Well the weather for the next few days will be typically atypical. Warm in the day and rainy until tomorrow when the temperature drops and we get below freezing (at night that is) until at least Sunday. Joy. At least Friday and Saturday will be sunny and dry, albeit cold and most likely windy. Texas weather.

Could It Be Him?

I checked my web logs this morning and saw a few hits from Kuwait. Could my son be reading my blog? I gave him the URL and told him if he needed to know what was going on to check there...it is updated all the time.

Soldier, if that was you, please remember that you are always in our prayers. Come home safe. We love you and miss you.

God Speed.

This Is November?

The weather forecast for the next 3 days: Mid to upper 70's and rain. Thursday's forecast: Lower 40's and a chance of snow. Yes this is November in North Central Texas.

The past few days have been nice, albeit cloudy at times. It has been warm (70's) and my wife and I have enjoyed our evening walks the past few days.

Work. I am not lazy but I really do not enjoy being here...or maybe I just do not enjoy working on this account. I have been involved with the support of my primary (okay, only) customer for over 10 years and I think I am getting tired of it. I used to rush to work, put in 50+ hours a week, be on call, attend meetings and try very hard to make things succeed but I don't do that anymore. I force myself out of bed to go to work early only because I can leave early. I work just about 4o hours a week, but I am still on call, only now it is all the time, 24 by 7. I attend a few meetings a week, but my heart is really not in it.

I have tried to analyze why I feel this way and think I have an answer, but it is not a singular one...it has many part to it:

1) I am tired of the constance "downsizing" of our group.
2) I am tired of office/departmental politics.
3) I am tired of corporate I/T.

I am not a lazy person. Most every manager I have ever had has given me kudos for hard work. However, lately I find myself being more like those around me...doing what is required and nothing more. I am not lazy and when I have a fully plate I will find a way to get it done. I am not letting things pile up...everything that has been assigned to me is done. As a matter of fact, I have taken it upon myself to do other jobs that are not in my scope of work just to fill the time.

I just ended a long weekend (Thanksgiving Holiday) and very few times did I think about work. I enjoyed not having to go and be part of the rat race known as corporate America. I enjoyed getting up and doing things around the house, helping my wife, doing yard work and not having to follow a schedule. It felt natural. It felt good. Sometimes I get depressed when I realize that I will have to do this for at least 25 more years.

I once said that if I were to win the lottery I would still work, no matter how much I won. I am beginning to rethink that notion. Getting up and preparing for another day in an office is taxing when you do not look forward to it. It is just not any fun to be part of corporate I/T anymore, at least from what I see of it. Maybe it is the provider-customer relationship we have. I used to work for our customer back when they did their own IT and I enjoyed it. It is not that I do not like who I work for, but how we support the customer we have. The whole thing is mired down in red tape, e-mails, SMS messages, and ongoing meetings. It is all politics. I could, if I wanted to, make myself very visible and very busy. I could be involved in many issues that I do not need to, just to be visible by my customer. While it would be good politically, it would most likely drive me insane. My mobile phone would never stop ringing, I would never enjoy a vacation, and I would be married to my job. I do not want that. There was a time that I was married to my job but that is behind me. I know this sounds strange, but I miss (to some degree) working hourly. You go in, punch a clock, do your work, punch out, and go home. No on call, no pager, no 3 AM wake up calls informing you of a major server outage in some off site location in a third world country.

"El Gee, stop complaining. Do your job or find another."

I wish it was that simple. There are a few things that are working against me. First, I/T is about all I am qualified to do right now. I could try to get some more education, but without experience, I do not have much hope in getting a job. Second, I am not able to do the same physical work I used to be able to do. Lift more than 30 lbs is not good for my back and most places have a "50 lb lift requirement" that I cannot meet.
Lastly, and maybe the most critical is the fact that I will not get the salary I make now starting over in the job market. When this job ends, things are going to get tight. Now I have a plan, but there is no guarantee that it will work and I am hesitant to try it without a big cushion to fall back on.

Now, with all that in mind, do I need to just buck up and tolerate the situation until it is gone or do I continue looking for a different job (internally), or consider external job placement? I have to keep in mind that I am supporting a wife and 2 dogs right now and anything I do will impact them.


I am glad the job market is looking up and I have faith that God will allow me to keep providing for my family in case something happens.

Exhausted

I am still exhausted from the rigors of "Green Friday" but thankfully I am done (with the exception of trimming shrubs in my neighbor's yard, but that is mostly my wife's job). The chemicals have been put down and all the messes have been cleaned up. I even managed to haul away the yard waste to the dump Saturday.

We did not have much planned for Saturday because 1) we were tired and 2) we really did not have that much to do. I vacuumed, washed dishes, and help with laundry as I normally do but I had to alter that to fit around my wife's activities. She was grooming and bathing The Golden as well as cooking veggies for dinner at Mickey and Mary's house that evening. We managed to get everything we wanted to do completed with just enough time to get showered and head 30 miles north to Mickey and Mary's house.

Dinner was pretty good and after eating and chatting a bit we took coffee and dessert (pumpkin cheesecake) in the living room while watching "LA Story" with Steve Martin. I was not sure if I had seen it or not, but as the movie continued, more and more of it came back to me. It was a good laugh (although rather vulgar at times) and poked fun at LA and the folks that inhabit the City of Angels.

We got up this morning and I walked Little Man like I normally do, but I was having trouble getting awake, even after a good strong pot of French Roast coffee. I did my bible reading and then took a shower before heading off to church. Jimmy, my Sunday School teacher, was not going to be able to teach so I went to another class to kill the time. The class was on Christian finances and was a video class with questions and answers. Some of the scripture associations were interesting, but the concepts were ones I am familiar with, so not much new ground was broken, although the teacher is a pretty good facilitator.

We left church after we dropped off a van load of totes we had borrowed when we helped move a SiC. She has been a bit slow unpacking them, but that was okay...the church was not in a hurry for them.

We had lunch at Royal Chopstix, a Chinese fast food place that has some unique features...like all you can eat fortune cookies and you meal is served on a real plate or (if you order a regular entree) in a mini wok. Entree, drink, and a small tip was $17.00 for 2 adults.

We came home after a quick stop to the pet store to get dog food and some dog treats. I was pretty tired so went to lay down and slept for about 45 minutes or so. Little Man woke me up so I decided go finish the yards by spreading the chemicals (weed killer, fertilizer, and spot weed killer). It only took me an hour, including cleanup (tools and a shower for me).

Yes I am exhausted but I really shouldn't be, should I?

I Prefer To Call It "Green Friday"

While most of America ventures out to find a bargain today, I continued with a tradition that started 8 years ago when I bought my house in NC. "Black Friday" is a very busy shopping day and I even joined in, but only to get things I needed to continue on with my tradition. I should not call this my tradition because it is shared by a large number of men (and maybe women who are not shopping) in the south eastern US. Not sure if many people do it here in south central US (North Central Tejas), but I know I did. What is the tradition that has been dubbed "Green Friday"?

Yard work.

To be more specific, "Green Friday" is the last major yard work day of the year. In the south we get to cut grass all the way into November (and we start in March or April) and my final cut is on Green Friday. Currently I have two yards to mow, trim, edge and clean up, so I spend 3 hours doing that. Since it is Green Friday, we get to add into the mix shrub, bush and tree pruning, as well as adding chemicals (fertilizer, weed preventer/killer, and bug spray). That can take another 5 hours or more but today we were unable to apply the chemicals and we did not get to trim the bushes and shrubs in my neighbor's yard, although I did manage to get some plants removed for her that she had requested a couple of weeks ago.

I started off the morning with a quasi-normal routine and as soon as I was up and alert (thank you French Roast coffee, extra strong, extra creamer) and Home Depot was open, I left to make my contribution to one of the busiest shopping days of the year. I bought 4 bags of fertilizer, 2 bags of weed killer/preventer, 2 packs of lawn bags, 1 gallon of Roundup, 1 gallon of heavy duty bug killer, a broadcast spreader (my old one fell apart), a bag of lava rocks (for the grill) and a landscapers rake (one of those tiny ones for getting in between shrubs). $117.07 and 30 minutes later, I was home with the hedge trimmers taking a chunk out of our out of control shrubs.

My wife and I have a pattern. I do all the big rough work and she does the detail/touch up work. This works out well and since we both usually clean up, we get done pretty quickly.

My wife got home from working out after I did a big chunk of trimming the shrubs and I had just started on the tree (low branches only this year). She came out and told me she would finish up and did so while I mowed our neighbors yard and removed the plants she asked me to do a couple of weeks ago. They are real fleshy plants that have a root bulb that grows very fast, much like Elephant Ear plants. You cut them down and they grow back the next year. The only way to kill them is to dig up all the roots. If you leave one little bit of root, they will come back.

By the time I had finished with our neighbor's yard, my wife was done trimming EVERYTHING in our yard. I started mowing our yard while she cleaned up and loaded up the truck with the branches from our Bradford Pear tree that she and I cut off. Each home in the neighborhood that we live in has at least one Bradford Pear in each yard. She was done before I was so she began cleaning the tools we used (hedge trimmers and pruners) so they would not rust. We learned our lesson about not cleaning tools when you are done.

Tomorrow we do not have a lot planned because we are having dinner with Mickey and Mary in the evening. I will clean house a bit (mostly vacuum and wash dishes) but not much else will get done unless I spread chemicals in our yard. I do not want to put any in our neighbor's yard until we have trimmed all her bushes and shrubs. That pays well :)

What Was All The Fuss About and When Bored...

My wife and I watched "The DaVinci Code" last night and I failed to see what all the hub-bub was about. My BiC's and SiC's were all in an uproar when the movie came out thinking that non-churched and those on the fence would be "confused" about the fictionalized message in this movie. I think they may have over reacted. Remember the movie "National Treasure" about the search for treasure using a map found on the back of the Declaration of Indepenance. I think historians had more to lose with that movie than we Christians did with "The DaVinci Code". The inaccurate depictions of Jesus Christ were in the very last 30 minutes or so of the movie and while they were key to the plot, you only saw it at the end. It was a suspense movie (and not a very good one...shame on Ron Howard) that used biblical inaccuracies to solidify the plot. OK, but I am glad I did not waste my money in the theaters on it.

This morning after doing my normal routine, I checked my blog web logs and was surprised to see over 20 hits yesterday. While a few of them were expected, most were not. I guess after all the turkey and football and napping, people DO get bored and surf for useless things on the web.

Thanx folks.

Beef, It's What's For Dinner...

And what good beef it was. We grilled three 6 oz filets that had been dry rubbed and marinated for a couple of hours and grilled 9 minutes on each side over medium-high heat. They were a touch rarer than I liked, but good nonetheless. Along with the filets we had baked red potatoes and spinach salad and of course pumpkin pie for dessert. Pumpkin and apples are two great reasons why I love autumn/harvest time.

I washed the dinner dishes and helped with some laundry (mostly from towels used to wash little man) as well as backed up data from the PC that I had not done in 10 months. I am such a slacker.

The music choice of the day was The Trans-Siberian Orchestra. We played all three of their Christmas CD's (which are mega cool) and I watched a few of their videos. I got it a couple of years ago as a gift to myself for Christmas. I guess I need to take it easy or I will burn out before the Christmas arrives.

No Turkey

Happy Thanksgiving to my American Readers. I hope that God blesses you richly on this day.

We are not going to have the traditional turkey for dinner today. Instead we are opting for bacon wrapped fillet mignon on the grill. Why are we not having turkey? We have already had one Thanksgiving dinner last weekend at church and the leftovers lasted all week. We also have been invited to a late Thanksgiving dinner at Mickey and Sherry's house. I think that will do me for traditional turkey dinners for a while...at least until Christmas.

Oh, I wanted to mention (no bragging thought) that it looks like an all cash Christmas this year. We have been blessed with a couple of cash gifts that will allow us to get gifts with cash and a new mattress that we badly need.

God is good!

Go Home

That is what my boss told me at 1:00 PM today. The day before a holiday weekend is always marked with a lack of desire to work hard. While I was not lazy, I did not break a sweat. I did my job and kept things in order until I left at 3:30 PM. "Wait, your boss told you to leave at 1:00 PM"...yes he did, but I waited until 2 before I considered going home...I was glad I did because I got called by our customer to do a little investigating on an open issue and it was helpful that I was still there at work. I was done with the issue by 3:30 and I left as soon as I followed up.

I got home and my wife was heading to work out and then go to the grocery store to pick up a few things. While she was gone, I ate a quick dinner of cold cuts and a Full Throttle energy drink and washed the dishes. When that was done, I quickly vacuumed the rest of the house (my wife did about 1/2 of it earlier today) and then did some Linux tweaking.

When my wife got home, we walked the dogs (no Jazzy, her owner picker her up earlier) and then watched Jericho. When that was over I caught the second half of the UNC-Gonzaga game. I watched it on the TVU Network since I do not have any sports channels in our cable package. TVU is not high quality, but it is better than nothing. By the way, UNC lost. I am bummed out, but it is only November...a long way from March Madness...

My Turn To Experiment, Part 2

Previously I said I was running Ubuntu 6.06, "sort of". The reason I say "sort of" is because my install was an update of Breezy Badger to Dapper Drake that went bad. I was officially at Dapper, but not all of Dappers features worked. I kludged it together enough to run until I could install Edgy properly since my upgrade to Edgy failed.

Tonight I installed a few more things from Automatix, made some cosmetic changes, and did some tweaking. I installed Pan (newsreader) since I was not needing an e-mail client on this machine. I also installed Analog and configured it. I ran into an error with the config file and decided to make some mount points and alter my /etc/fstab file to match the analog.cfg file.

I noticed that a few things were installed but not showing up in the menu, namely Alacarte and Gnome Configuration Editor (gconf-editor). I created links for them and things were good to go. I decided to test a few items to make sure they worked, so I configured 2 printers (an HP 1115 USB Photo printer and an HP Laserjet 5L on LPT 1). Both printed test pages properly. I then tested my USB thumb drive ant it worked (read and write) properly. I then tested my Smart Media and it worked just like it should.

I then played around and installed Camorama and Google Earth, both of which worked flawlessly. I then ran XSane and tested my scanner, a Mustek 1200 UB. First test scanned worked as expected. I tested it by scanning a postcard that was sent to us from one of my Swedish friends:



If I am not mistaken, Ubuntu has accurately detected all my hardware.

My Turn To Experiment

Since I knew my wife was going to be gone for a few hours last night, I decided to experiment. I logged on to geekbox (Ubuntu Linux 6.06...kinda. Explanation later) and burned my first iso in Linux (which was pretty darn easy, albeit slow). I burned an iso of Ubuntu 6.10 and had planned to wipe my old screwed up install (it ran, but it was hacked together...nothing was standard) and install a fresh, current Linux image.

I started by backing up the only data I needed from the old installs (fstab, mtab, analog.cfg and bookmarks...all other data was on the data drives) and then booted to the Ubuntu CD. If you want a "blow by blow" of a "normal "install, check out the early posts on Knightmare's blog. I am not going quite that detailed because I am going from memory and the minutiae will not be as accurate.

When the disc image booted, I chose install and made all my choices (name, user name, password, host name, time zone) and moved on. When it came to partition the drive, I had to pay attention because this is where my hardware is different from Knightmare's. I have 2 hard drives with a total of 4 partitions. The first hard drive (hda) holds an NTFS partition with Windows and a partition (hda2) formated with ext3 for Linux. The second hard drive has two fat32 partitions (for ease of use for my wife and that NTFS write is still buggy in Linux).

My goal was to wipe (but not repartition) the ext3 partition and install a fresh Linux image. When the installer asked me which drive, I chose the first one and then I chose hda2 and selected the manual option. Gparted, the partition tool, is pretty slick. I selected the ext3 partition and clicked next and a window appeared asking me if the choices were correct. It had listed all my partitions and had check marks next to the ext3 partitions (swap and /) indicating these were to be reformatted. None of the other partitions had check marks so I clicked next. The new partitions were created and the installation began. I received a message that the boot info would be written where I wanted it (this allows the dual boot when Windows is already installed). I started this at 7 PM. At 7:25 the install was complete and I was asked to reboot, which I did. When the PC was rebooted, I was given multiple choices for boot options: The standard Linux kernel, the safe mode of Linux, Memtest, or Windows. This was just like it was before I wiped and reinstalled except that Linux was the default. I needed to change this. Doing so is easy, if you do not mind the command line a bit.

I booted to Windows (just to make sure the boot manager was working and nothing went FUBAR) and was happy to see my wife did not lose her Windows partition due to my experiment. After rebooting into Linux, I went to the boot file ( sudo nano /boot/grub/menu.lst) and changed: "default 0" to "default 4" (Windows was the 5th line item in the list, the first is always 0, so Windows needed to be 4) and "timeout 10" to "timeout 5" so Windows would boot in 5 seconds if no selection is made. I this because I thought it unfair to make my wife do anything different to use the PC.

The very first thing I noticed when Linux booted up was that my Windows drives were already mounted ("mapped" to Windows users) so I did not need to refer to my fstab and mtab like I thought I would. Then I installed Automatix and used it to install some plugins that I knew were needed (Flash, Adobe reader, etc) and then installed all the codecs that were legally free so I could use the machine to listen/watch media. I updated the Nvidia drivers and then I copied over my bookmarks and installed the Firefox extensions I normally use. I also installed the Debian Menu script that puts an entry on your menu list of all programs installed, just in case the installer fails to do it. Nice app! I also used Automatix to install a few apps that I could have used Synaptic to install, but since Automatix was already running I used it. There were not many that I installed because I did not want to become obsessed with this experiment.

Later, I tweaked the tool bars (I like a cleaner look than what comes by default), changed the theme to a custom one, and changed the wallpaper and GDM logon screen since orange is not my color (I prefer silvers and blues). I installed localepurge to get rid of man pages and locales that I would never need and cleared up a lot of space. Localepurge, when installed and configured will automatically remove any localized man pages and locales from any install you do, saving space on your hard drive. Another tip is to run "sudo apt-get autoclean" after your updates and installs to clear out any temp files. I also configure an orphan filter in Synaptic to have it manage my orphaned files.

I decided to stop at 9:00 when my wife got home. I still have plenty more to install to cover everything I do, but the two hours I spent gave me a good box that meets about 90% of my daily needs.

Tuesday's Gone

With the wind...

Normalcy. That is the way I describe Tuesday at work and the early hours at home. It was really just more of the same old thing and I was not upset about that. The only things that stand out in my mind are trivial: Trying to take my Security test and it still is not showing up in my available tests, playing with mind mapping software for a bit, telling some of my co-workers about it, and having my old Tech Lead write me a thesis on why he uses VMware as a reply instead of a simple, "thank you". Oh yea, I was not invited to a departmental lunch (sorry, El, we forgot about you) and the head of security for our site came and asked me for some info about a product I used to support. Blah day.

About half of the people in the office (who are still employed) are gone and that means it was quieter, although the two who sit beside me are loud. My door was shut most of the day.

I guess it was a bit of a goof off day, in between support requests. We have people off and they are not being very proactive it giving me any info about who is filling in for them while they are out. I guess they were counting my crystal ball doing that for them.

I found a 2006 UNC basketball schedule in csv format that could be imported into my PDA, so at least I know when the games are. I will try to see the ones I can either online or at a local bar and grill (no booze for me though) when I have time since we do not have the sports channels in our basic cable package.

When I got home my wife called and told me she was having dinner with a SiC (Sister in Christ) in Wylie, That gave me a few hours to kill so I ate, washed dishes, fed and let out the dogs and started a project that I will talk about in my next post. When my wife got home, we watched both episodes of Law and Order and hit the hay. I was pretty tired, although I am not sure why.

I got up and realized that I finally had Jazzy integrated into my morning routine...just in time for her to leave. I almost hate to say this, but I am gonna miss her to some degree. Once she calms down, she is a joy to be with. Of course, our dogs do not agree with me...they just seem to tolerate her. I guess the key was integrating Jazzy into the "pack". A new member has to be the Omega. My wife and I are the Alphas and the two other dogs are the Betas. Only counting the dogs, Little Man is the Alpha, The Golden is the Beta, and Jazzy is the Omega. Once we all figured that out, things were much smoother.

Free Your Mind

And the rest will follow...

On a suggestion from Knighmare, I installed VYM (View Your Mind) mind mapping software on my work Linux desktop (which is a rogue, so I am just 'testing' this ... snicker) and I see the value in it. While my mind map is not as cool looking as his (I guess that says something...), it will help me track getting a Linux machine up and running from scratch.

It has a feature that is nice: It exports to ASCII. It takes the image and coverts it to text clockwise. That is a neat feature.

This is only a couple of minutes worth of scribbling...but you get the idea.

Thanx Knightmare.

BtW, the version for Windows does not work, so I am going to try Free Mind on my work machine. There is a version of FreeMind (Java) for Linux here. Has more features than tVYM, but it is Java, so it is slower. I had some dependency issues, but I finally got it to work.

Manic Monday

Not really. It was not a bad day at all. Work was rather low key with many of my colleagues taking the week off. While I will not be at work on Thursday or Friday, I will be on call. Hopefully, things will be quiet.

Yesterday was just more of the same for me at work. Nothing hardcore, just some e-mails and some online training. I finished the class, but the test was offline so I cannot get credit for the class until the test is back online and I complete (and pass) it. It is not hard, just basic security things, but I normally do not test well and the longer the test is offline, the worse I will score. Oh well. It only took me 5 tries to pass the "mega tool" test I took online. That test was tricky. No I am not ashamed that it took me that many tries. While I use the tool everyday, the questions were on some esoteric features we do not use much, if at all.

My wife called to tell me that she "could not connect to the server". What she meant was that Roadrunner was down again. I had her reset the cable modem and router and she was back in business. She has the interesting habit of giving things multiple names and getting frustrated when people do not know what she means. Part of it is her Adult ADHD. She is not on meds for it because I am not sure I want her to do that...I am not opposed to her taking them if needed, but not jsut because it will make my life easier.

I got home and my wife was on her way out the door to go to aerobics class. I ate dinner and cleaned up and got online to catch up on news while she was gone. I watched a little TV, but mostly it was for background noise. There was not much on I wanted to see.

I got a call from the head trustee asking me if I had a copy of the meeting minutes since he had not gotten them from the trustee who takes them. I did not have the official minutes, but I had her notes since she typed them up on my laptop, so I sent those to him. About 10 minutes after that, Mickey called me wondering my wife was okay. It seems Mary had been calling and calling but my wife was not picking up. I told him that the reason was because my wife was at a class. I told him I would have her call Mary back.

My wife got home and I asked her if she was going to join me for the walk and she said she did not feel like it now because the class was pretty strenuous. I understood so I took Little Man and Jazzy (the dog we are watching) for a walk to the school. I let them run and play for a while and we came back. On the way back my BiC called me and told me things were looking up for him and his wife. I listened in disbelief as he told me about how good he and his wife were getting along. He had told me that he is going to have to file bankruptcy and he and his wife plan on selling everything they can (except the house) and cut way back. I am not sure they are going to be able to live like that, but I am happy for them if they can. We chatted until I got to the house then I told him I would talk to him later.

When I got the dogs wiped down and in the house, I asked my wife if she wanted to watch some UFC and she said that it sounded good, but she wanted to get a shower first. I queued up UFC 65 and we watched the first half together. My wife was tired so she went to bed while I stayed up and watched the rest of the matches. A couple of them were pretty good, although the one I wanted to see did not end up the way I wanted. Matt Hughes lost to Georges St-Pierre in the fist minute of the second round. Matt was outclassed from the start of the first round.

After letting the dogs out a final time, I went bed. I was tired and needed my rest.

It Took Them Long Enough

Thank God that O.J will be silenced on this.

I am a bit confused by some of Regan's comments, though. It sounds like this is a sounding board for her own issues.

You're Crazy

If you think that Viewsonic's 19 inch flat panel LCD (VP920B) is "cheaply made", then you are crazy. Yes it has some weak points (the built in speakers suck and the "auto adjust" is not even close to correct, hard to see buttons on the front, and text on gray/silver backgrounds is not as clear as I would like it) but it also has some good points (vertical height adjustment, great full motion video, a $230 price after $30 rebate, DVI inputs with cable included). Do you have any idea how hard it was to find an AFFORDABLE 19 inch monitor that raises and lowers, not just tilts?

The reviews I read seemed fair. Most of the complaints were about the poor speaker quality, but who uses speakers built in to their monitor anyway? The text on silver/light gray backgrounds can be a bit of a pain (it appears washed out and fuzzy at times,) but if you avoid those colors the picture is great. It tends to be a bit bright, but a lot of video I watch is dark so it balances out. The button so on the front are almost impossible to read, but the layout is pretty normal with the power on the right and the option button on the right and adjustment in the middle.

A couple of reviewers said they though the fit and finish was low quality. I do not agree at all. It looks as nice and the fit and finish is just as good as many monitors I have seen that have cost a couple of hundred more.

I was disappointed that Win XP did not detect it and I had to use Viewsonic's unsigned drivers, but that was not a big deal. I get nervous installing manufacturer drivers because of all the extra crap you are usually forced to install with it. However the drivers were all that was installed (after unchecking a few options during setup) when the Macromedia powered CD was ran.

Dollar for dollar I would have to give this a 7.5 out of 10. If you need a good, low cost 19 inch monitor that adjusts up and down a few inches, and you can live with a bit of haziness with text on silver/light gray backgrounds, this is one is for you.

BtW, default Linux drivers seemed to work just fine.

Sunday, Bloody Sunday

I can't believe the news today, oh I can't close my eyes and make go away...

Not really, but I could not pay homage to U2 back when they were not megastars. But I digress...It is Monday morning. I am here to blog about my Sunday.

When the alarm went off, I did not want to get up at all and neither did my wife. I did not have Sunday school, so I had an other hour to get ready...and we needed it. With the addition of Jazzy to our routine, things get busy quickly.

Today was the day of the church Thanksgiving dinner, which was being held later that evening and also LCA's yearly drama presentation in place of worship service. It usually is a great performance and this year was no exception. The production was a little Orwellian and was rather eerie at times, but very well done. After the presentation was presentation was done we grabbed a bite to eat, ran a couple of errands and came back home to let out the dogs. My wife whipped up quick box mix dessert for the dinner at church while I did some quick e-mails I had forgotten to send out a few days ago. After that, my wife took a nap and I watched Battlestar Galactica that had been recorded. Good show, gritty, and filmed in such a way that you feel like you are there.

After BG was over I woke up my wife and we went to have dinner at church. We were both scheduled to serve, but my wife found others to do this for me so I got to relax a bit. I with a couple from our old care group as well as with their kids. Afterwards I roamed and chatted with other men from church. We shared a few laughs and when it was time to clean up, I assisted until it was 90% done and my wife and I (plus some leftovers) came home.

A quick dog walk and feeding later and we settled down to watch "Superman Returns". I know I was tired, but I have only fallen asleep during 1 other movie that I wanted to see and that was the first Star Trek movie. Superman Returns was a snoozer at 1.25 hours into a 2.5 hour movie. We did not even finish it. My wife went to bed and I checked the news and e-mail and was in bed by 10:30.

I told my wife I need a weekend to recover from our weekend which seemed to be non-stop. This week should be a bit better, with only Wednesday being hectic (at least scheduled to be hectic) and dinner with friends on Saturday (which means very little yard work will be done...again. It is gonna be Christmas before I get it all done.

Well, I have to pack a lunch and brush my teeth, put up Jazzy in her crate and hit the road.

More later today.

And It Is Only Saturday

I spoke to soon..when I posted last, my BiC had not called in about 48 hours, bit as soon as I hit "publish", he called. We spoke for about an hour...things are not looking up and I am not sure the two of them are gonna make it. Time will tell.

Late morning I read the Fry's ad and saw a great deal on a 19 inch Viewsonic LCD flat panel monitor. It was $249.00 plus a $30 rebate. I checked the reviews and for the money, it was the one for me. The real nice thing is that it has an adjustable vertical base. Not many 19's have that and that was a feature we wanted. A lunch time, my colleague Peder and I drove to Fry's to get one. He liked it so much he got one as well.

The rest of my Friday was pretty light. I stopped at the store on the way home for my wife to get a few things that she needed to finish dinner. She was making meatloaf and needed some bread crumbs. so I picked them up as well as a few other things. After dinner and dishes, we walked the dogs, which was a real workout session for my wife. Two miles of pulling and correcting...that took about an hour.

We got home and watched Law and Order and then went bed...we were both tired and needed some sleep.

Saturday I got up and walked little man and Jazzy...it was not quite as bad as the night before, bit it was not pleasant either. We got back and the dogs were fed while I enjoyed my coffee and chatted a bit with my wife. I wanted to go to the Men's Breakfast at church and since it was starting in less than an hour, I needed to hurry and get a shower.

20 minutes later I smelled better :-) and was on the road to get some grub to feed my belly and some fellowship to feed my walk...my Christian walk. I was right on time to help set up some tables and chairs so pitched in to complete the task. The food was blessed and we ate and chatted for the next 75 minutes.

When the event was over, I stayed behind to help clean up. I washed a ton of dishes and then came home to see what needed done around the house. We could not do much until later that afternoon so I worked on hockey-puck for a bit and then we went over to Ben and Darlene's house to deep fry 4 turkeys for our church Thanksgiving dinner tomorrow. Each bird took about an hour to cook and 30 minutes for the fryer to recover. Doing the math, that is 6 hours per bird. We were at their house for about 5 hours and I hated to be there that long and wear out our welcome, but it had to be done.

During the day, the BiC I have been talking to had called 3 different times. I had to send him to voicemail once...I just too busy to take his call. He did not leave a message, so I did not call him back.

We got home and let the dogs out and fed them and ate a little food ourselves. I have not had much to eat all day but I do not feel bad...a little hungry, but not starving.

After the dog's food had settled, we took a long walk with them. My wife, tired of fighting a dog that was not lease trained, put on the gentle leader to make the walk less stressful... and it worked. The walk was much more enjoyable.

W got almost home before our son called. He arrived in Kuwait on Thursday and will be there 10 days before he ships out to Iraq. He e-mailed us his address and we plan on making good use of it. He sounded in good spirits and told us he was sending us pictures of Kuwait. I am excited.

After we hung up with him, I grabbed my laptop and started blogging. I have to admit I am liking this wireless internet...it makes life interesting.

Time to get some sleep. We have a big day ahead of us tomorrow.

Winding Down? Not Quite.

My day went pretty well after I got to work. Nothing major happened but we did have over 200 account maintenance requests in the Unix queue. While I do not do that work anymore, I still help manage the queue for them. Of course I received some perverse pleasure in sending all those to Malaysia...well, they have our jobs now...so I guess they have to do them.

At lunch time I went to Sears to pick up some Levi's 550 jeans that were on sale. At $27 a pair, I got two (after trying them on..I am a little bigger now... 33x32 fits well) and was in and out of Sears in 20 minutes. I was able to eat lunch, buy jeans and do a crossword puzzle in 63 minutes. Not bad.

After lunch I updated my time sheet and checked on some documentation that had been updated. MY wife called from work to remind me that we were dog sitting Jimmy and Collette's dog, Jazzy this weekend and part of next week and also that she wanted to grab some dinner out. We agreed on Taco Cabana and after I let the dogs out (once I got home) since I would get home before she could. After feeding them and letting them out to do their business, I went to have dinner with my wife.

The meal was good, like it usually is. Taco Cabana has the best Mexican fast food I have ever had. My wife said she had to stop by the vet to get some NSAID's (Non-Steroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drug) for our Golden who has been limping a bit. She went her way and I went mine.

I got home and washed the dishes and by that time my wife had made it home. She still needed to call Collette to find out when they were coming over to drop off Jazzy so She did that and I went to update the hand me down (Code name - hockey-puck) so I could leep all my mail on it. After a brief update, it was ready. I only have to get my bookmarks updated and I think I am ready to move away from the main machine on Linux for a while. It might get updated, maybe not. I am not really worried at the moment. Once I get a car charger for it, I will be very close to to 100%.

Jimmy and Collette (as well her daughter Sandra) arrived with Jazzy about 7:30. We put our dogs up so Jazzy could get acclimated to our house while Collette assembled the crate. Once that was all done, coffee and tea were served to our guests. Jimmy has a Bluetooth enabled PDA so we tried to get it to talk to hockey-puck, but no luck. It could be a Linux thing or it really could be broken. I need to research a bit more.

Our guests stayed until about 9:30 or so and told us they needed to get home and pack / sleep. Sandra was sad that Jazzy was not going to be with her, since they sleep in the same room, but both will survive.

After they left we let the dogs socialize and then we took them for a walk. Jazzy has not been leash trained yet (she is two years old) and at 60 lbs is a handful. She did not do well on the walk while on the leash but we survived. A short walk with Jazzy pulling the entire way is harder than a long slow walk with our dogs.

Jazzy was put up for the night as my wife and I got ready to hit the sack. Jazzy started to whine a bit (she is not used to sleeping by herself) but a firm yet gentle reprimand from my wife stopped that. Sleep came and I did not stir until a few minutes before the alarm went off. Yes, I was awake again before the alarm...a new record!

I got up and Jazzy started whining...I wanted to get her out before she made a mess (and I did) and I wanted to get our two dogs out as well. The Golden and Little Man went out and did their thing and when the Golden finished, I let her in after wiping her down. I then got Jazzy (who ran right out the door) leashed and we headed out for a brisk walk to the school yard to let Jazzy run.

I took Little Man and Jazzy with me and it was a hard walk. it may have only been a 1/2 mile walk (round trip), but it took 30 minutes with Jazzy. She had a blast running around the yard and we happy to be free. After a couple of minutes of exuberant frolicking, I leashed her and headed back. When we got back, wiping her down was a real struggle, but I finally finished that task. My wife was up and prepared the dogs food and after they ate, Jazzy settled down a bit. I brewed a small pot of coffee (2 cups) and chatted with my wife while I drank it. I got it strong enough, but too sweet. Well, that does not happen often, so I forgave myself. After coffee I had my bible time and got a shower.

After my shower, I ate and checked mail...nothing pressing so aftert I ate, I washed the dishes (breaking a second Star Trek: TOS glass. Two down, two to go...how depressing. Well, I have had them 11 years. It was bound to happen sooner or later. Besides, my wife has broken a few of the other glasses including one of her favorite Tigger glasses. I guess that is just the way things are.

With the dishes and breakfast out of the way, I brushed my teeth and hit the road. I left the radio off and did some alone time with God...it just felt like the thing to do today. Sometimes I get that way...it just depends on what is going on in my life.

I got to work and noticed my boss was here before me...that is a rarity lately. I also realized that the BiC I have been talking to has not called in a couple of days...I need to check up with him.

Today should be mostly painless. Saturday I have the men's breakfast at church and I need to help my wife with the hedges in the front. They look horrible. My fault, but we only have so much time/daylight in a day, right?

Trash / Treasure Update

I have been slowly tweaking my new old laptop to see if I can use it as my primary for a while. I realize it is not as speedy as the desktop, but it 95% of what I need it for works as far as I can tell. One of the things it does not have is a CD burner. That is going to be an issue, but as long as I have a USB drive, I may be okay.

Also, I figured out why I was getting one of the errors during boot up. I thought it was a DVD boot issue problem but it turns out that it was just an incorrect BIOS setting. The BIOS was looking for a network boot device and could not find one so it was giving the error message and trying the HD, not the DVD-ROM. Once the setting was changed to try the floppy first, HD second, DVD-ROM third, and LAN last (this is the only option that puts the LAN last except for one that puts the HD first and I do not want that). This laptop and a neat feature that allows you to interupt the BIOS boot and pick a device to boot from, so my order above is not as critical as long as I keep the LAN last. So at least I have pretty much everything working that I need from a laptop. With wifi enabled, it is pretty hard on batteries (I get about 1.5 2 hours, tops) but that has not been a big issue. I am looking to find a car charger (something generic) that will allow me to take it on the road and use it to play DVD's when I am bored. I would prefer not to take my work laptop in case something happens.

Since the case is in such bad shape, I have been looking for cool stickers for it. I had a few Ubuntu stickers left, but I would like to find some others. I am sure I can find some at the Christian Book Store if I can get there. I know it will look a tad juvenile, but it is an older hand-me-down.

OS Installed - Check
Wired Network Access - Check
Wifi access - Check (WEP or open connections only)
Office Suite - Check
Browser Configured - Check (extensions installed and configured)
Patches Current - Check
Hardware working - Check (sans Bluetooth...I have not been able to get it working)
USB Thumb Drive - Check (read/write and mount/unmount)
E-mail Client - Check (installed, but not configured)
Play Media - Check (DVD, mp3, Flash)
IM - Check (installed but not configured)
Vehicle Charger - Needed
Case - Check (we have a back pack we use for laptops)

I am sorry to hear that Knightmare has had so many problems with Ubuntu on his laptop. I know it must be frustrating. The first couple of times I installed Linux on a laptop I was very frustrated. Hopefully he will not give up on Linux and will keep a spare box to learn on. That is the only way I made it.

This Is Going To Be A Long Day, Part 3

After speaking to my BiC yesterday for about 40 minutes, I continued on with my normal day. I had lunch with several colleagues (ones who work here and one who were laid off a while back) at Desperado's Mexican Cantina. Very good food, good sized portions, and fair prices. The service, by the way is fantastic.

After the "executive lunch" (Read: Longer than the 1 hour) I got a call from my wife asking for IT help. I love her but she is not very keen on the basics. No worries, though.

I got back to the office and really had nothing of any major importance so it was very easy to leave on time. I drove home and helped my wife prepare the veggies for care group, then fixed an e-mail problem she was having stemming from Comcast removing my custom forward and placing one of their own on all the e-mail accounts and not telling us about it. My wife wondered why she had not gotten as much mail as of late. I will admit we had informed many people to use our new addresses (mistergeek.com for me and our son and gmail for my wife) but many are slow to change. Again, no worries.

After fixing the mail issue, I logged some bills and put the veggies into a casserole dish to take to the Ben and Darlene's house*. Were in the middle group to arrive...not early but certainly not late. The group was too big to manage properly in a house (17-18 people...yikes...just like the old days!) but we muddled through it. We had a good deal of fun and cracked on each other like we did before we divided the group in two. It was fun and the lesson was good...it was on accountability. We discussed AP (accountability partners) but our minster who was in attendance had informed us that AP's were not really biblical...it was an American idea derived from scripture. I think I need to ask him if that is such a bad thing or not. e began to discuss it, but we ran out of time.

We left at 9:30 and got home a couple of minutes later (Ben and Darlene live acrossed the main road from us..you have to drive a zig zag pattern to get there. I bet it is only 150 yards away as the crow flies). We got home and walked the little man around the block. We would taken the Golden, but she has been limping and the vet wants us to keep her from using the leg until she knows what is wrong.

After a very cold walk (cold for Texas...upper 30's and windy) we came home, changed into warm jammies and watched Jericho on CBS. My wife and I still enjoy watching it. It really keeps our attention.

About 11:30 or so we finally hit the hay. I woke up a bit tired a few minutes before the alarm went off (what is this, 3-4 days in a row now?) and waited for it to sound before I took little man for his morning walk. I had a confcall at 7 AM but my wife was already getting the dog's food together by the time I got back. She is sweet. A shower, coffee, breakfast, and some bible time rounded out my agenda before the confcall.

The confcall was uneventful, no stumbling blocks to report. I gave my little bit and then we discussed an ongoing issue with hard drive failures. This issue has even affected me...I lost a hard drive a while back on my work PC.

After the meeting had adjourned, I grabbed my gear and headed to work. I was going to do some updates from home, but out ticketing system via the VPN was horrible, so I gave up and came in. I am a bit run down, but I am sure I will make it. At least tonight I have no major issues to deal with. I have to send out an e-mail to the last remaining elder at our church and work on getting my e-mail client configured on my laptop since I am getting closer to using it full time (More on that in another post.

After this day is over with, it is all down hill...for a few days at least. From here on out, only Wednesday and Thursday will be areas of concern...the rest of the week will be open. I hope.

*Not their real names.

Ick

I find this repulsive. OJ do you have no shame?

On a side note, I still do not know how he could be acquitted for 2 murders but lose a civil "wrongful death" case. Maybe I am just dumb.

This Is Going To Be A Long Day, Part 2

After getting off the phone with the BiC who is struggling, I went to my Change Mgmt meeting and then the rest of my morning was just more of the same old, same old. I had my lunch and then sat out under a shade tree in my truck doing a cross word puzzle to flex my mind and relieve some stress. After lunch updated my time sheet and followed up on a few issues until about 2 PM when the hotline rang. It was one of our customers, an IT Mgr who is stationed in Sweden. We chatted a bit and then I went to work following up on the issue she was calling about. In the process of working that, 2 other customer calls came in. They were not upset, but they were frustrated that there was not much info being posted about the issue. The issue was complex and multi-faceted, so a clear answer was not available. I continued working this issue until I left to go home before I left however, I sent a detailed e-mail to the Escalation Manager who worked the shift after me. he lives and works in Malaysia, about 12 hours ahead of me. I gave him clear permission to call me if he was not clear on any of my notes.

I got home and let the dogs out and fed them. Both ate (SURPRISE!) and then my wife came home to quickly eat a sandwich before she went to her kick boxing class. We chatted and then she changed clothes, kissed me and went on her way. "Mickey" was coming over to finish his last module in One on One Discipling. He was also providing dinner, a pizza from a great little mom and pop shop where he lives, about 30 minutes away. My wife left 2 minutes before Mickey arrived and called me to tell me he was pulling in. I made sure the dogs were put up and let Mickey in.

Mick greated me with a wonderful meat lovers Pizz from Mamma Mia's. It was very tasty and we had no problems devouring most of it, saving a slice or two for my wife. Mick also handed me a leather bound Promise Keepers NIV bible, which was nice, since my paper back copy is getting worn out. He stated he got it a long time ago but never really cared for it, but he knew I like the PK version so he was giving it to me.

We completed our meal and began our lesson, which was a lot of question and answer, but wnet by quickly none the less. We were able to eat, get the lesson in, chat about the course, and do a final prayer in less than 2 hours. When we finished, Mick left and my wife pulled in the garage. Perfect timing.

Since it was law and Order night and the first epi was scheduled to start in about 15 minutes, I got the kitchen cleaned up and my wife and I watched the episodes while she ate pizza and drank soda. After the second episode, I walked little man, who really needed it, around the block. He was not lying when he sat by the door to let him out. He left me three packages to clean up...nice doggie.

However, before I could get out the door the guy from Malaysia called me to ask a few questions. I gave him the info and asked how he had been and he told me miserable...he was coming down with a cold and was on call this weekend. I know how miserable he was...it was evident. I pray that he feels better.

I got back from my walk about 10:20 or so and grabbed the laptop to check the mail before I went to bed. I did not check work mail since I had the hotline forwarded to my mobile phone. If people need me, I am (unfortunately) easy to get in touch with. I only stayed up a little while, maybe until 10:45 and I went sleep with my wife curling up next to me. Sleep came fast and the morning came quick.

I woke up on my own about 4:20 but laid there until the alarm went off at 5 AM. My wife was already up securing things outside due to the gusty winds we are seeing. The wind is blowing all the time at 30 mph with 40+ mph gusts. It is darn freaky out there today!

I completed the normal morning routine and added the task of securing the things outside so they did not end up in the neighbors yard or worse, the street. I also responded to an e-mail from the BiC I have been working with. The over nature is pretty personal, so I will not blog it here. I did respond and gave him my opinions (which are biblically sound) and told him that while the truth hurts, he will be much stronger if we do not "sugar coat" the issue. After finishing all my normal routine, I kissed my wife and headed to work.

I got gas at Kroger ($2.00 a gallon w/my card) and got in to the office before most people did. I fired up my work laptop and check the mail. Not much in the way of updates, although the issue that happened yesterday may not be resolved yet. I got a voice mail from the Global Incident Mgr telling me that things were still not finalized, but that message came in later yesterday evening. Oh boy.

Today will most likely be a repeat of yesterday, with tonight being care group night and there is only one TV show, Jericho, that we watch will be on. I still will most likely get to bed near 11:00 PM and only get 5-6 hours sleep, but all things considered, I feel pretty good..not fatigued, in good spirits, but a little achy...maybe a cold, I am not sure. Only time will tell.

Ah, the phone is ringing and it is ... my BiC...later.

This Is Going To Be A Long Day, Part 1

Notice I did not say hard or unbearable, nor did you hear me ask for sympathy. I was just stating a fact. Today is going to be a long day...longer than the 24 hours that God intended it to have.

Sometimes I feel like Jack Bauer and the line that separates one day from another is very blurred. Tuesdays and Wednesdays are typically like that for me...it is part of my life and I have come to accept it. If it bothers me enough, I will change the circumstances that contribute to it. To borrow a phrase from the great orator F. Gump, "I am not a smart man..." but I do know when to back down (My wife will argue with me that I am a smart man...but what does she know, she is just a girl*).

My long day started yesterday morning at 5 AM when I awoke to take little man, our 12 year old mutt (part corgi, part beagle, part sneaky neighbor dog) who suffers from sever allergies, for his morning walk. I am not sure if he has trouble seeing or if he is going senile, but he has taken up the habit of attacking newspaper bundles lying on the sidewalk. While he does not actually bite them, he charges up to the bundles in an attempt to get them to run. Good luck, Fido. While this part of the story can be quite entertaining, I digress.

I finished my morning walk and carried on with the rest of my day as I normally do. The only breaks from routine come from my wife stealing my truck to have the tired rotated and spin balanced, forcing me to become "Married Man" (sing along...Married Man, Married man, drives around in a mini van...) by driving around in ... you guessed it ... her mini van.

Another break from normally dull routine come from my new TL (Team Lead) who needs help with a Power Point presentation. Now being a manager who hates PPP, I wanted to tell him to sod off, but being the Christian that I am, I quelled the desire to throw a violent fit and helped him. While I did not spend a lot of time with him, he called me 3 times in 4 hours and stopped by my office twice to get help. He has a lot to learn about being a TL. Power Point is da bomb [/sarcasm]

The last deviation from routine came when a BiC (That means 'Brother in Christ' for all you Hell bound souls...[/sarcasm]) and talked to me through my ENTIRE lunch hour. Not being one to turn away someone who needs a sympathetic ear, I allowed him to burn off mobile phone minutes (not really...We both have Cingular and we have free mobile to mobile calling) while I ate my lasagna, drank my lemonade and ate a little cherry vanilla yogurt. I even graced him with a "Uh huh" and "Yeah, right" every now and then, in between bites.

The rest of the day was pretty normal. I IM'ed a few people, worked on my work of fiction that will never see light of day (this is prolly the 7th story I have started that I will not finish although I am further along on this one that any of the others...), and chased down people regarding some outstanding trouble tickets. Normal crap.

I got home and found my wife caulking around one of the outside windows. We chatted for a while and then I went in to grab a sandwich before I headed off the the church trustee meeting. Before I got started, my wife's mobile phone rang. I did not recognise the number, so I answered, "$Wife's phone..." and it was the wife of the BiC I had talked to earlier. She wanted to, duh, talk to my wife so I went outside and gave the phone to my wife. I went back in and started making my sandwich and before I could take a bite of my Genoa, Pepperoni, and hard salami sandwich (with provolone and spicy mustard), The BiC I talked to during lunch called. 2 phone calls, two meals, same person. Sigh. I chat with him and he sounds agitated. We talk and he asks me what I am doing. This time I tell him that I am trying to eat before my trustee meeting. He apologizes and go back to eating.

My wife comes in and tells me that wife of the BiC who called me wants (read: Needs) to talk. My wife is going to meet her at a coffee shop 25 minutes away. Wife tells me she loves me and leaves. I finish my sandwich, wash it down with some diet ginseng green tea, grab my padfolio and laptop and head to church.

The trustee meeting lasts until 9:30, I get home at 9:45, and walk little man at 10: I get back from my walk at 10:20 and grab a drink. I am stilled wired so I go work on a Linux project for my laptop, thinking that it will only take 30 minutes or so and I will be in bed by 11:00. at 11:45 the "project" is not even close to being complete (I will have to make a separate entry about that) and I am getting tired. Considering I get up every morning at 5 AM to begin the exciting routine that we all have come to know and love [/sarcasm], I am going to get a maximum of 5 hours sleep. I peel off my khakis and polo shirt, brush my teeth and climb into bed.

I awaken to some stirring (Read: Wife putting away clothes and fussing with dogs) in our bedroom. I check my PDA for the time and it says "4 AM". Wow. 4 hours sleep. My wife attempts to hold a conversation with me because, heck we all are up and coherent at 4 AM, right? However, unlike the masses, 4 hours sleep is a nap, not sleep so I am far from being captain conversation at this point. I fade in and out of sleep, finally waking to my wife telling me that the alarm will be going off in 5 minutes. So let's be fair and say 4.5 hours of sleep.

The alarm goes off and I shut it off, get up, and put on what I believe is a pair of jeans and a sweatshirt (It could have been anything, but that is what I believe I was wearing and that is the story I am sticking to) and go take little man for a walk. That dog has no idea how much I love him and all his senile behaviors (I am sure that when we both see each other in Heaven, he will thank me) to put up with 10 PM and 5 AM walks.

Little man does his business and I clean it up like a ersponsible, law abiding Texas resident that I am and I head back home. When I ge there, my wife has everything I need to brew my coffee set out. Now I bet you are saying to yourself, "If she really loved him, she would have his coffee ready for him when he got back." Wrong. As much as I love my wife, she cannot make my coffee the way I like it. She always puts too much cream in it, making it taste like a hot liquid dessert instead of a slightly sweet cup of wake up juice (The golden rule for making coffee for my wife is add cream until the color matches the tone of the paint on the living room ceiling). But alas, I digress.

I make my coffee and chat with my wife about her meeting the night before and my phone call with the husband. We compare notes and realize that these two would really benefit from spending a lot of time in prayer TOGETHER.

After I finish my coffee I read my bible and grab a shower. By the time I get out, my wife is back in bed. Must be nice...[grumble] oh well, she has to work as well and at least one of us should be rested. I grab my laptop and fix a bowl of granola (it is TOm' Thumbs store brand...Safeway Select I think...very tasty) and catch up on the news while I eat. Now that I am fully awake, I wash up the morning dishes (coffee mugs, cereal and dog bowls, spoons, etc) and brush my teeth. I kiss my wife on the forehead and pack my lunch and grab a gallon bottle of spring water before I head off to work.

The ride to work was uneventful except for a kid in a Honda Accord (with plastic wheel covers) who cuts me off. I give him the sad head shake and continue on. I get to the building and badge in, saying hi to the security guard (who is from Romania, complete with thick accent). He asks me what is for lunch (a normal question for him) and I tell him my wife grilled salmon the night before, so I am having leftovers. I continue towards my office and get started on my daily work routine.

While I was typing this entry, the BiC whom I talked with yesterday and whose wife Mrs. El Gee met with last night, called. We chatted and he did his share of complaining and I hit him with some biblical truth. While he did not like it, he told me he needed to hear it. He also asked me what his wife and my wife talked about and I told him, bluntly mind you, that it was none of his business. I teld him that how can his wife get over trust issues if we repeat what she talks to us about? He agreed with me and that was that. We chatted a little while longer but we both had to go. He was getting another call and I have a meeting soon.

When I get off work, I have my last One on One Discipling class with Mickey. He is bringing a pizza and coming over early, if he can swing it. Once that is done I still have to walk and feed the dogs as well as watch 2 episodes of Law and Order if they are not repeats. It things all go as planned I will get to bed at 11:00 PM and will be back up at 5:00 AM the next day, which will be about as long as today is because we have small groups from 7- 9 PM and then of course it will be time to walk the dogs and watch Jericho. Thursday I will be up earlier because of a 7 AM confcall with Sweden and Malaysia. Thursday will not be quite as long but it makes me glad when Friday finally arrives. While I cannot sleep in on Saturday (Mens Breakfast at church) I will at least not be at work.

*I am being facetious about my wife. Really.

One Man's Trash...

Late last week I inherited a hand-me-down laptop that had seen better days. It was 5 years old, the power supply did not work, the CMOS battery was dead, the DVD player does not make great contact in the bay, it did not have a floppy drive, and it looked like someone played ice hockey with it. It was very scratched up and the screen bezel has a gap. Rumor had it that an engineer bought it 5 years ago and when things started failing, rather than fixing them, he bought a new one and tossed the old one. One man's trash is another man's treasure.

So you maybe wondering why I would even bother looking at it. These are the reason I wanted to look at it:

Processor - 1.12 ghz PIII (my old one was a 633 mhz PIII)
20 gig hd (my old one was 12 gigs)
512 meg RAM (My old one had 256)
Built-in NIC (my old one had a PCMCIA card)
Wireless 802.11 B, AKA Wifi (my old one ... HAHAHA)
Bluetooth (My old one ... HAHAHA)
Very sharp display with very few scratches (My old one ... HAHA...err.. you get the idea. The screen was very scratched)
5.5 lbs (My old one weighed 7+ lbs)
The mouse works (on my old one the stick did not work at all and the touch pad was far too sensitive no matter how much I tweaked the config files and the PS 2 port did not work)

Now the old one had some pluses: Spare battery, car charger, floppy drive and dvd player, and it was sturdy. However I felt that the pluses outweighed the minus in this case. Now if I have to boot to a CD, I may be screwed. During boot it says that it cannot connect to the DVD-ROM and to check the cables. Well, it works when the machine is running so it looks like some sort of BIOS issue. I cannot find anything that would indicate that it is set up incorrectly, so I may have to see if a BIOS flash will work. I will not investigate that until I get to the point that the machine will not boot with the OS correctly and I cannot boot with the CD.

Now, the progress I have made:

I found a working power supply in the recycle bin at work. I charged the battery and after letting it charge for several hours, I installed Ubuntu 6.10. After the battery had charged for 24 hours, the CMOS battery was able to keep a charge well enough to keep the RTC (Real Time Clock) accurate without staying plugged in and turned on all the time.

Next I began tweaking the OS. I ran into some odd issues that I did not run into the other 4-5 times I have installed 6.10, but a little research fixed them. I tweaked Firefox, shared out my home directory, installed SAMBA and got it on the network via CAT 5. I tested the DVD player and once I got the proper free codecs, it played a Christian Rock DVD sampler quite well. I did have to install some extra codecs to have the ability to play Microsoft media formats, but that was not a big deal. Once those were installed I was able to watch videos from CNN's web site without a problem.

I tested the USB ports and was able to read my USB thumb drive on the first try without any issues. I still have other USB things to try, but I think that I will be successful. However only time will tell.

After I got my Linksys WRT54G working (flashed the firmware and allowed it to "acquire" the settings from Time-Warner ... I think I cloned my MAC address to, just to make sure it would work), I set up WEP on the router and on the laptop and was able to connect wirelessly. The only thing that bothered me initially (and it only happened the first night) was that the signal strength indicator was very low on the laptop display and I was right next to the router. The following days I was able to use the laptop without any noticeable lag from the kitchen and the bedroom (the rooms furthest from the router). I was happy.

I was trying to figure out how to test Bluetooth on the laptop but was not sure how. I read on the web site that you have to toggle Bluetooth on and off opposite the WiFi meaning that you cannot have WiFi and Bluetooth running at the same time. I read how to do that and thought to myself, "How do I test it?" My wife's mobile phone has Bluetooth so I figured I would try to transfer some pics she took with her phone to my laptop. Well after installing most everything I could find and researching for about 30 minutes, I was ready to try. I turned on Bluetooth on my wife's phone and then toggled the laptop to Bluetooth mode. I then told the phone to detect other Bluetooth devices in range. Since the laptop was only a few inches from the phone, I knew distance would not be a factor. Well, the phone never detected the laptop. I tried a few things but after about an hour or so I gave up. Now the reason I am not too upset is that it is possible that the Buetooth on the laptop is broken..it is after all a hockey puck. I have one last way of checking and that will be with my work laptop. I think it has Bluetooth as well

Down, but not out, I started cleaning the thing up. I took some special anti-static cleaning wipes designed specifically for electronics and cleaned up the laptop as best as I could. I was thinking that I could paint it with some plastics paint, but decided not to. It looks rough so maybe it will be less of a temptation to steal.

The last thing I did was name it. I decided on the name, "hockey-puck" in honor of he the condition I found it in. The name fits. I figure a few Ubuntu stickers on it and it will be perfect.

Now overall, I am thinking that this may be my new main pc for home use. I will need to copy a lot of personal files (home directory and some config files that will be difficult to recreate) but I think it is possible. It is not near as fast as the 3 ghz PC that I dual boot, but...I think I can survive.

Now I have been using this around the house from every room and have been pleased so far with the performance. I feel sorry for the guy who tossed it. While it is worth nowhere near what it was when it was new ($3500.00) it still performs quite well. At least it performs better than the 633 mhz laptop it replaced.

I will keep you posted on my progess, but I think we have a winner here.

Runaway Dreams Are In My Head

The other day I had a dream about a person whom I go to church with. Now the dream was very vivid and I can still hear snippets of conversations that I had with that individual. Now the odd thing about this dream was the person in it was acting like someone else that I know from church, a person who I converse with several times a week. Now at first, I did not realize that the person I had dreamed about was acting like the other person whom I know rather well. It was not until I was telling my wife about the dream that the connection was made...and it was made by her.

I believe this is what is know as transference and now that I think about it, it was a strange dream.

Have I lost you on this? Okay let's pretend you have a couple of friends, Bob and Tom. Now one night you have a dream that you and Bob are discussing his new business. Bob looks like Bob, sounds like Bob and has Bob's mannerisms, but the topic (and the circumstances surrounding it) you are discussing is not something that Bob would do...it is more like what Tom would talk about. Or if that is hard to grasp, imagine talking to Tom, but Tom looks and acts like Bob, but with the issues of Tom. Easy, eh?

I know, too much gray matter on a dream. Well, at least I know why I had the dream...and that did not take much gray matter at all. I basically took the skills of Bob and merged them with the problems that Tom is having. Both are people I speak with on a regular basis so their mannerisms are very much fresh in my mind.

Boom, Here Comes The Boom...

"BOOM!" is what I have printed on the floppy disk that I use to thoroughly (Read: DoD quality) wipe hard disks that I either, A) getting rid of for whatever reason, B) get from customers that I am doing work for that want me to dispose of their equipment. I usually start the process in front of them to give them an idea of what I will be doing. If I do not the time to finish, I either let the process run and come back later or I take the unit home and wipe it when I get time.

What is this tool that I use? It is a boot CD or floppy with a Linux kernel and a few other items needed to make a bootable disk that has one function...to irrevocably destroy data on a hard drive so that only the most talented (or wealthy) of hackers would be able to retrieve. The name of the tool is "Darik's Boot and Nuke", or DBAN for short. This tool can take a long time to run, but the results are worth it (I have seen it take 12 hours on a full DoD wipe of 10 gig hard drive). I have been using this tool for at least 4 years and have wiped dozens of hard drives at home at at work. As a matter of fact, I am running it now on two laptops that I have been using over the past few months at work that will be recycled soon. I am not going full DoD, opting for the 10 gig per hour wipe (Mersenne Twister option).

What did I write "BOOM!" on the floppy? About 3 years ago or so a colleague saw the disk (which still had the Gateway logo and boot disk verbiage on it) askedme if he could borrow my boot disk. Since I had a boot disk sitting near it, I told him, "Sure". He proceeds to pick up the DBAN disk and boots to it.

"What kind of boot disk is this?", my colleague asks.
"What does the screen say?", I replied

He then reads the screen to me and I told him whatever he did, do not press any keys unless he was ok with losing all his data. After that, I wrote "BOOM!" on it so I would not that it was dangerous.

It Has Been A Day ... Really

I woke up sore from sleeping at odd angles and not sleeping with my orthopedic pillow between my knees. For some odd reason, I just was not able to stay in the proper sleeping position. I got plenty of sleep and other than being sore, I felt pretty good. Needless to say I took my Aleve (I am back on Aleve therapy for a week to reduce some swelling in my lower back) and along with a nice relaxing walk with little man and some French Roast / Kona blend (my own combo) coffee, all was well.

I got ready for church and made it to Sunday school early enough to help set up tables and chairs for the class that has mostly seniors in it. I was told by Ann Reagan that her husband's back was doing much better after he started his Aleve therapy and that made me very happy. He was in so much pain it hurt me to see him.

My class that I attend was pretty empty...just me, the teacher and his wife. It was a good class that made me think a little (which is what both he and I want) and I was eager to share what I learned with my wife at the appropriate time.

On the way out from class I ran into the one of the people that my wife and I council now and then and she looked like she needed to talk so both my wife and I talked to her. We chatted until service started and then I noticed my son standing in the fellowship hall in his ACU's. He looked good. He gave me a hug and we walked into the sanctuary. It was the first I had seen him other than the brief chat we had Friday when he arrived at DFW from Kuwait.

The service was good, as usual and when it came to our time of prayer, I asked my son to come and let me and my wife pray for him. We had just started to pray for him when a small group of people gathered around and laid hands on us and joined us in asking God for protection for our son and peace in spirit for us. We were all in tears before it was over.

When the service was over we were stopped by at least a dozen people before we could finally leave to go to lunch. I did not want to be rude, but it was a time for us to be together as a family. I knew that people wanted to see my son, but I think I deserved the right to be selfish with my son while he was with us.

We left and headed to a new restaurant in town that we thought our son would like ... Sugar Babies BBQ. It was not quite as good as the first time we went, but it still was quite acceptable. Also the fact that they gave my son a 50% discount on his meal did not hurt, either. After getting our fill of pulled pork, brisket, and sausage, we left for some Starbucks coffee.

After coffee and a brief ride home, I got my camera and got several pictures of our son, my wife and the pets in various combinations. Most turned out pretty good but the one pic my wife took of me and our son makes me look old. Ok, so I am old, but I do not have to look it.

Our son was looking a bit tired and asked if we would take him back to the hotel. I was feeling sad because I realized this most likely will be the last time I get to see him until he comes back on his two week furlow in the summer. We got him back to his hotel and hugs were exchanged. We drove home, mostly in silence. Both of us had a lot on our minds.

About 6 PM or so my wife and I took a walk, getting some much needed exercise. Both of us were pretty emotional and on edge, causing us to be a tad terse with each other during the walk. I did my best to diffuse the situation, but we were too close to the issue to really be rational. By the time we got back home from the walk we were better, but you could tell we still had a lot on our mind.

After we got back, I e-mailed one of the pics I took to members of the church family as well as moving pictures from the camera to the PC ... I was a bit behind on this task. To be honest, I am behind on a lot of computer tasks, back-ups mostly. I hoe I can take the time to do that soon. I would hate to lose any data because of my carelessness.

Pulling Out What Little Hair I Have Left

Exactly 2 months ago, I posted about my trials with a Linksys WRT54G router. Today, I was playing with a hand-me-down Toshiba Tecra 9000 that looks like it was the puck in an Olympic Hockey game and decided to try out the wireless. I knew one of my neighbors had an unsecured connection (and they do not appear to be using it much...) so I "borrowed" it to test the wireless of the hand-me-down (story on it later). I got connected and was able to hit a few web sites and even apt-get update/upgrade my Ubuntu installation on the hand-me-down. Okay, the wireless on it worked even though it had been handled very roughly.

What does all that have to do with my old Linksys? Well, Dakboy said I should troubleshoot more and I thought, what the hay, I am finished with my chores for the day so I have the time to waste on it. So I dug it, plugged it in and began playing with the config.

First thing I did was a hard reset. Nada, still no WAN, but I had LAN. Internet port FUBARed? Maybe. To test, I cascaded it from my Netgear (a little configuring had to be done...thank you Linksys.com) and realized the internet port was live. Hmmmm, what was the problem?

I noticed that Linksys had a firmware notice (from 2 months ago) that was 3 revs newer than mine so I figured, "what the heck...". I flashed the firmware on the router and still no internet.

I turned off EVERYTHING on the home net (server, 2 PC's, router, and cable modem) and waited 5 minutes. I powered up the cable modem and let it sync with Road Runner's network. Then I fired up the router and let it acquire an IP and then I hooked up the hockey puck (that is what I should name that laptop) and looked at the configuration of the router. Everything looked normal. I tried to get to the web via the laptop..no dice. I turned on the server (it was initially set as static IP so I changed it to DHCP for a test) and tried to get on the web...no luck. I fired up the main PC, "geekbox" in Windows mode and my Yahoo applets for weather and stocks connected. I was very surprised so I made sure all the cables were in the correct router (they were) and rebooted the laptop and the server. Both connected to the intarweb.

Last trick was to get the laptop connected wirelessly. I set the router security to wpa but only saw WEP on the laptop, so I downgraded the security on the router and entered the key in the laptop. It connected. So now all three machines are up and running on the Linksys router and it only took 1.5 hours.

I still have no idea why the router just 'stopped working' in first place, but at least for now it is running.

Friday Nights All Rght For Shopping

My wife called me up at work and asked if I wanted to go have dinner and shop for a flat panel monitor. Since I was hungry and we needed a monitor, I jumped at the offer.

We went to Fuddruckers for burgers and after we finished stuffing ourselves, we drove to Best Buy to look at their selection. I have a couple of requirements for a monitor that need to be met before I will consider it and so far only a couple of monitors meet those requirements and one is UGLIER than home made sin. I need the LCD to have a vertical adjustment to raise and lower the screen and it also must have a native resolution of 1280 x 1024. So far the combination of the two has been hard to find in my price range.

Since the monitor shopping at Best Buy and Fry's was a bust, my wife and I looked for a good quality coffee machine that will make small amounts (4 cups) of coffee. Fry's had a good selection but was out of stock on many of them and the one I liked at Best Buy used those silly coffee "pods" instead of regular filters and coffee. Lazy bastages.

After we got home we walked the dogs around the 2 mile circuit that my wife and I try to walk 5 times a week. It was a bit chilly but I did not mind, although I cannot say the same for my cold natured wife. She would like to have froze.

A Gift Horse

I have an Optiquest V95 19 inch CRT in my home office. It was thrown away by the shipping and receiving department of a company I used to work for 8 years ago. It had a 3 year warranty and was only 2 years old. Back then each department was responsible for their own PC equipment and they bought what they could afford. 10 years ago a 19 inch CRT was not cheap and when it was in the trash I was a bit surprised. I took it to the lab and fired it up and it worked, so I took it home. I have been using it ever since and it has been a great monitor, albeit a bit big sitting on the desk. a 19 inch CRT takes up about the same as a 20 inch TV and you can imagine how that would look sitting on your desk.

Several weeks ago, the old reliable CRT just shut off. At first I thought it was the power supply to the PC, but dismissed that when I noticed it was still on. I flipped my KVM switch over to my Linux server and I could not get video from that, so that is when I knew it was the CRT. I unhooked it and let it sit for a while, praying that it was not dead. We did not have the cash to get another monitor and if I was going to get one, I wanted to get a 19 inch LCD. The prices were dropping and I knew that a 19 inch LCD had nearly the same viewing area as a 21 inch CRT so it seemed that was the size to get if I had to.

I waited for about a half an hour and plugged it back in and turned it on. It fired up and I got video. That is the good news. The bad news is that every now and then it "pops" and while I do not smell anything burning and the picture stays on, I am nervous about using it long term. I also thought that the picture was a bit washed out so I asked my wife for her opinion and she said that is what she had noticed as well. With that in mind, we prayed that God would bless us with the money to get a new monitor. We knew that we were tight on money and with several $150-300 unexpected expenses that were incurred we have depleted a large part of our buffer. I was getting nervous.

10 days ago, we were blessed with a bonus that we had not counted on. I was told that I was eligible, but we have been told that before and the bonus never materialized or was so small that after taxes it would not even make a van payment. So when I got the bonus on my check, I was speechless. The first thing we did was tithe (gave 10%) to our church, as instructed by the Bible. We also made sure that all the bills were up to date and once we did that, we took out a couple from our church who are very dear to us. It was a blessing to us to treat them to a nice meal at "The Macaroni Grill" with appetizers and dessert. It is not often we can do that. Once we replentished what we had used we did not have a whole lot left but my wife and I agreed that we need to get a monitor when I can find a good deal on one. I went to Fry's today during lunch but the ones they had on sale did not adjust vertically and that would be a problem. They had others that would, but they cost more than I wanted to spend on an LCD. I will look around and see what I can find and then make my purchase.