Maybe if I start posting about more mundane things I will at least have a detailed record of the events leading up to my eventual psychotic break.  Also for potential lawls?

Annoyances: whooo today was awesome!

Air Conditioning being off at work because “the building is closed and no one should be there”.  Great thanks for not remembering that some people work on the weekends even when the building is “closed”.  And not being able to track down the guy that can turn the AC back on.  Seriously it was to hot to spend anytime in the office.

Having the closest elevator to my office, and where I needed to going being shut down.  Thus making me have to push carts loaded with equipment even further to get to the next elevator.  Also see first annoyance about AC.

Having to push carts loaded with equipment from outside across the giant building to the elevator closest to where I needed to go.  See also previous 2.  Yep building being closed means I can’t park near a close door.

Having to drive across Boston with a car loaded with equipment because the same guy that controls the AC also deals with the keys for the company trucks.  Not that driving an SUV would have made it better, it just wouldn’t have been in my car.

Swearing a lot due to having to make extra trips across the building to pick up items that were forgot.  Seriously who packs up equipment and leaves the surge protectors?  Whoops left the key in the lock box!

Not getting anything overly productive done because setting up 2 training rooms took far longer then it really should have.  Oh and the office I should have been able to get things done in was 90 degrees.

On the plus side sitting in the server room for an hour or so after all of that was great.  Yay for the one room that will always be climate controlled.

So in summary, hot office equals me unhappy.

On Wednesday, a coworker asked me for a paperclip. I handed him a colored one and he responded "No it has to be silver." Confused, i found a silver one and handed it to him. "Ok, now put it on your pocket." Still confused, I did so and asked him why. "In the Navy, on a sub, a paperclip on the pocket indicates someone is a short timer, leaving active duty soon." I wore it with pride for the rest of the day, and i think ill continue next week.

In 4 more work days I go from Grizzled Vet to FNG all over again. During a team meeting on Wednesday, the director of the RNOC called me a traitor in jest. I actually have a meeting with my manager monday which I'm guessing will be some sort of informal exit interview. Hopefully i can convey the message that i want to leave on good terms and work towards better communications between Tier4 and the RNOC.

I did find out that one of my first "official" training sessions when i get over to the new department is going to be Juniper training. it sounds like Juniper is going to be used a lot more in the Core networks with CPE (Customer Premise Equipment) being Adva or Juniper switches. I had planned on trying to get a CCNA, but maybe a entry level Juniper Cert work be better. Heck, maybe ill just go for both! After the wedding I'm planning on putting together a CCNA lab, and probably building a hacked Juniper router for practice. You can run JunOS on just about any computer since its based on FreeBSD and their system controller cards are essentially just blade computers.

I spent yesterday working on the Jeep and Melissa's car, and i plan to spend today gaming and cleaning up the apartment a bit. Its going to be a bit odd not having Thursday and Friday off any more, but i think it will be good in the long run. In other general life news, We got a kitten about a month ago that we named Ninja, and we are 30 days until the wedding!

This was the first time I have rode on the Tow Path this year. There was a bit of a sprinkle this morning, but I looked up the weather on a website with an animated map and I could see that the rain was not going to come. Sure enough we did not get rained on during our bike trip. Deanna and I started in Akron and went to Peninsula. Now that she has had her heart fixed she is able to ride her bike a whole lot further. The trip was good and we had Nate come and pick us up at The Winking Lizard.

It has been more than 2 months since my last post, and I’ve been pretty busy. Fortunately, I’ve been busy enough to keep my nose out of the news for the most part so I don’t really have any comments on politics today However, all of my former posts still apply.

I’ve spent entirely too much time on my new computer. The damn thing has been rebuilt, almost completely, twice now, but I think its finally done. I put all the parts into a new Antec Three Hundred case. I don’t have any windows or lights in this one, much like my last Lian-Li, but it looks just as sexy. I bounced around the idea of the Antec Nine Hundred Two, but I didn’t think I’d like all the flashiness and I think it was the right choice. The case is clean and I’m damn happy.

As for the guts of it, I did finally get the memory working. The 4th kit I got from OCZ did work and I’m able to run at advertised speeds. Actually, right now I’m running the i7 @ 3.96GHz and the RAM at 8-8-8-24, 1440MHz, 2T CR and I’ve never had a better experience on a computer before. I did have one last hiccup: the PSU I won at QuakeCon a few years ago died just a few weeks after I put it in service. The computer stopped waking up from sleep (it wouldn’t even respond to the power button) and eventually stopped powering on at all unless I toggled the main. I replaced it with an OCZ 750W and all is right in my world (of computers).

Since my last real post, Theresa and I adopted a dog from the SPCA. She’s a Husky/Hound mix and her name is Lita. Theresa has a bunch of pics up on Facebook, I’ll try to get some in WPG2 sometime soon, but feel free to check them out on our profiles. She’s very playful, although not always that friendly toward other dogs, and my apprehension for getting her was completely unwarranted. Theresa and I didn’t need any help being happy, but Lita is a very welcome addition.

The biggest change in my life actually happened today. I’ve accepted a job at another company and will be leaving Cisco in less than 4 weeks. Better details might be provided later, but some of my team members may be exploring the same company so I don’t want to put any details out there that could hurt them professionally. Suffice it to say, my frustration with my business unit grew to a point where I was already starting to look for other jobs internal to Cisco, so when I was cold called by the head hunter I was willing to listen. The company ended up being a pretty good fit and they’re willing to pay me a salary commensurate with my experience and ability (at least that’s what I’m telling myself), something Cisco seemed to be lagging in with no signs of that changing anytime soon.

YEAH THAT'S RIGHT!

Wow it's been a long time since my last post! Mike keeps bugging me about updating and I've really been lazy lately. I was thinking about what has gone on in the last 6 months and at first I thought nothing! But thinking about it more I realized that a few memorable things have gone on.

In June Mike and I took a trip to San Francisco. We got free travel from Mike's benefits and free hotel from the Hyatt where I work. We didn't have any family visits that we had to make so we spent the whole time together. We walked around a lot, went to a baseball game, went to the Japanese garden in Golden Gate Park, visited a aquarium where they had sea life found in the bay, and went on a ferry ride to see the Golden Gate Bridge and Alcatraz. There were a lot of places to walk around and get clam chowder and sourdough bread. It was a really fun time. I did get a pretty bad sunburn on the first day of walking around. Also it was freezing when we went to the baseball game and we didn't bring jackets. The wind coming off the bay makes for some chilly evenings! We got around pretty well with public transportation. It was fun to ride the cable cars and, after a day of walking everywhere, nice to sit down on the ride back to the hotel. It was a nice trip. The only disappointment was not being able to take a tour of Alcatraz Island. The Pride Parade was going on the weekend and a lot of people were in the city to see it. Tickets for Alcatraz were sold out so we couldn't take the tour on the actual island. We did go on a ferry ride to see it though. That was pretty cold too. I got a little wet too because the boat kept splashing into waves. I think the ferry was my favorite part of the trip. I'm glad that I'm getting to see more of California. When I was growing up we traveled a lot, but not really to anywhere in the western US. It's really good to have Mike's free travel and free hotels. That way we can spend more money on activities and good food and stuff. I didn't want to return to work after our trip. It's always hard going back!

Speaking of work...it's been pretty uneventful lately. I do come home and complain a lot but nothing that exciting ever really goes on. A few months ago my boss, Jon, decided to have a Iron Chef competition for all of the cooks who wanted to participate. I didn't sign up to do it but a pair from the Grand Met did. The secret ingredients were salmon, avocado, and apples. They went up against two banquet cooks and lost. I've heard my coworkers (Irene and Nathan) bitch and complain about how they should have won and the whole thing was fixed. They think that they are the best cooks even though they lost and they don't know how to take a loss. It has been the most annoying thing to have to listen to every day. After that Irene and I got into an argument about some Humus that I made. She didn't know that I made it and she said to everyone, including me, that it was "fucking shit." I didn't like that at all! Because I knew it wasn't bad and she embarrassed me in front of all of my coworkers. I told her that I made it and that if she doesn't like it thats fine, just say it in a less harsh way. It really hurt my feelings because we were friends and we did stuff together outside of work. I valued her opinion. Not so much anymore. I don't want to get stomped on again. I've decided to listen to what people have to say but know that I know how I feel too. If I made something and I feel that it is good, I'm not going to let someone else tell me that it's shit. I know I have to take criticism and I do about things like too salty or overcooked or something. I'm just not going to let it hurt my feelings. It's a hard thing for me to do though because I'm the type who cares about what people say. In happier news, Jon nominated me two months in a row for employee of the month! I was happy to hear that! I do work very hard and I always try to do my best. It is very hard though to have a good day when the people I work with are in crappy moods or are having bad days. I just try to put it behind me, do the prep and my station, and not worry about anyone else. I have learned that I decide if I have a good or bad day, not anyone else.

In other news, I got a week off in October and my mom came to visit! It was fun because she hadn't seen my new apartment since Mike and I moved in in March. She liked it a lot and was very impressed with the decorating. I thought a lot about where I wanted everything in our apartment to go and it's nice to hear my mom say I did a good job. I really like this apartment a lot! One of the projects that I wanted to do while my mom was visiting was to build a headboard for my bed. I'd spend weeks looking stuff up online about how to build, assemble, style, and hang a headboard. I felt overwhelmed doing the project myself. That's where my mom comes in. I explained to her my vision of a solid upholstered grey headboard with padding so that I could lean against it, and I wanted tufted buttons. The final product is a kind of checkerboard pattern of 3 different gray textured panels. We used plywood as the base and put 2" foam, then upholstery batting, then fabric. We pulled the fabric taught and then stapled it down to the plywood. To attach the buttons we found the center of the square and drilled a little hole through the plywood so we could feed some wire up and attach the button and then pull it tight. Everything worked great and the buttons look really good. The hard part was attaching the square pieces together and then figuring out how to hang it on the wall so that it was flush to the wall and very secure. We attached the boards using metal connectors and we screwed all of the pieces together. We hung it on the wall using picture hanging things that we found at Home Depot. We got two just to be safe. At first we hung it too high so we had to take the screws out and start again. It was okay though because you couldn't tell where the holes were and it looked great! The finishing touch was the wrought iron decoration that I hung above the bed. All I have to do now is find some bedside tables! It kinda sucks having all of my stuff on the floor next to the bed. I think I found the ones I want I just have to shell out the cash to get them.
My mom and I mostly worked on the bedroom while she was visiting but we did go shopping too. :D One day we went to visit my aunt in McKinney and another evening we went out to dinner where I work. It was a good meal and nice to be on the other side of the kitchen, but a little awkward too because I knew all of the employees were watching us. I hope my mom liked having dinner there. We got a scallop amuse (kinda like a mini appetizer) and little crab salads, and a dessert platter, in addition to our whole meal, made special by the kitchen just for us. I was really surprised when our waitress came and said that we didn't have to pay for dinner because the managers would take care of it. It made me feel happy that they did that for us.
I'm always sad to see family go when they have to go back to Ohio. I was pretty tired the whole time she visited because I'm used to waking up so late. Ohio is an hour behind too. So if I wake up at 10:30am that means that it's 11:30am Ohio time. My parents usually get up around 5:30am and I didn't want her to have to sit around alone in the mornings. I tried not to get up later than 9am. I tried very hard not to get grouchy and have a bad attitude because of my tiredness. I just get cranky when my sleep gets thrown off. I hope she didn't feel like I was being a brat or anything! LOL I'm looking forward to going to Ohio sometime in the next few months. I don't know when it will be but it will be soon. I miss everyone there and the weather (gasp!). I just like having snow! Especially for the holidays.

Every Halloween I carve a pumpkin. It's just something that I like to do. I always celebrated Halloween when I was growing up. I am a definite candy lover so any excuse to load up is a good one for me! I had 3 pumpkins this year. The first one was a small pumpkin that I carved a cute face on. Within three days it was moldy and had to be thrown out! I was disappointed and thought it was a bad pumpkin. I heard at work that the Hyatt was having a pumpkin carving contest. I wanted to get in on that. The first prize was $100. I signed up and picked out my pumpkin. I decided to carve an owl sitting in a tree. It looked pretty good right after I finished carving it. After a few days it started limp and everything was just getting old. I was disappointed because the contest was still a few days away and I had to get another pumpkin! What was I going to do now? I went online and looked a pictures of pumpkins. The coolest one I found was a cannibal pumpkin. I decided to do that for my last try. Mike and I went to Central Market and got a really ugly, warty pumpkin. It had one moldy spot but was still the best looking and biggest pumpkin there. This time I carved it the night before the contest. I woke up early the next day to drop it off at work to get judged.


There were 20 other pumpkins there when I dropped mine off. I was surprised at how many people got involved. I didn't win, but it was fun to do. I also figured out why all of the pumpkins got moldy so fast! In Ohio it's already getting close to freezing at night in October. That keeps the bacteria and moisture to a minimum. Here in Texas it stays pretty warm at night. It may only drop to the low 50s. That's still warm enough for mold to grow. I'll have to keep that in mind for next year's Halloween. No trick-or-treaters came to our door. I didn't think they would. I've never had anyone come to the door of my apartment for Halloween. I didn't have any candy anyway. Mike and I like to go to the store the day after Halloween and get 70% off candy to have for ourselves. :D

The next adventure coming up is a trip to New York City in a few weeks. I'm really excited because I've never been to NYC. It's going to be colder than I'm used to but that's okay. I just have to pack lots of sweaters and warm things. I got a room at the Grand Hyatt at Grand Central Station. I'm hoping that it will be easy to travel even though its around Thanksgiving. A few of the things Id like to do are see the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island, see the Sept 11 memorial, go to Central Park, maybe take a carriage ride, find some cool places to eat, and go shopping. Mike and I aren't really into the art scene so we'll probably skip the museums. We've already decided on pizza for lunches. I'm a big fan of the show Sex and the City and it would be cool to see some places where the show has been filmed. I'm really looking forward to having a break from work too. Even though we're only going for 4 days it's still nice to go somewhere and see something new.

New TV! Samsung 42” plasma.

- Anyone who looks at this entry has to post this meme and their current wallpaper.
- Explain in no more than five sentences why you're using that wallpaper!
- Don't change your wallpaper before doing this! The point is to see what you had on!



EDIT : Using this wallpaper because. well. it looks cool. Very few wallpapers are still worth using *and* still look good after stretching it across two displays.

rightclick->view image for full resolution.
and, damnit i forgot to take my desktop icons off again.