[esm@logic.net ~]$ _

I've been too busy to put up a proper write-up of them, but we took two vacations between jobs: one to the Caribean, and the other to visit family up in Canada for Mom's birthday. Pictures are available at those two links. Warning, this is a long post, and if you don't know us, you'll probably be bored to tears reading it.

The trip to the Caribbean was somewhat planned; we knew we'd have a bit of time between jobs, so we made some last-minute reservations for the airfare and cruise, and off we went. First stop was Puerto Rico; we stayed for a couple of days in Old San Juan, while waiting for American Airlines to find find our lost luggage. Sporting some of the finest t-shirt shop fashions, we left port aboard the Royal Caribbean "Adventure of the Seas" without my clothes, which showed up that night, thanks in no small part to some great efforts by Royal Caribbean and the wonderful hotel we stayed at, El Convento.

The next day was at sea, and I was already starting to show signs of some kind of cold or flu. The following day, we pulled into Aruba, and I was well and truly sick. So, of course, we went diving; best dive ever. I paid dearly for it, but I wouldn't have missed that wreck dive for anything. We stumbled around the downtown area a bit afterward (Erica taking pictures, me trying to remain upright), and packed it in for the day.

Day three was Curacao, which is an absolutely gorgeous island. Punto, the downtown area, is incredibly colorful, and the floating market is really something to see; it's a farmer's market, writ huge, with boats. ;-) We spent most of the day snapping pictures and wandering around, and really didn't have anything scheduled for that day other than just relaxing a bit. I'd started feeling a bit better that day too, although Erica was starting to catch whatever I had by this point.

After that we stopped in St. Maarten did a bit of shopping right off the water taxi; Erica practiced her negotiating skills in a camera shop, and we both bought far more chocolate than we should have at the Belgian Chcolate Box.

Our final destination was St. Thomas, and we spent most of the day playing tourist; we took an island tour that took us to a few scenic overlooks, gave us a good amount of time to splash around at Megan's Bay Beach, and then ended up to at Blackbeard's Castle for a historical tour. The next day, we arrived back in Puerto Rico, and had another day of flying back to Chicago.

Our second trip was almost completely unplanned; we grabbed last-minute flights to Saskatchewan to visit Mom for her birthday and Christmas, which ended up getting the whole family together: all of my brothers and my sister were able to be there for Mom's birthday. We spend a week up there doing practically nothing but helping Mom, taking pictures, and eating too much. :-)

Long time, no update; I'll try and catch up on recent events over the next few posts. First up: I'm no longer working at Subscribermail, and instead took an offer extended to me over at Fermilab, known for hosting the world's largest (currently) particle accelerator, amongst other research in the high-energy physics world.

I'm technically in the Finance department, in MIS, doing a lot of the same kind of work I've done in the past, although this time out I'll be working as part of a two-person team, and the support will be much more of an internal nature. At this point, I'm still coming up to speed on the environment and the internal training, but I'm pretty excited about this.

I wish all my coworkers from Subscribermail the best, and I'm sure we'll keep bumping into each other in the future. :-)

Well, after a year and a half of not having a proper vacation away from Chicago, we finally got away for a bit over a week. And if I never see another airplane or rental car again, it'll be too soon. If you don't know me personally, you probably won't care about the rest of this, but it's my blog, so I get to be a little self-indulgent from time to time.

I won't rant about the process of getting a passport for Erica; she did a good job of summarizing it herself. Ugh. Anyway.

We kicked everything off at 3:30 AM Thursday morning. Get up, get ready, do some last-minute packing, and wait for the cab to arrive. As luck would have it, the cab got there early, and we scrambled to get everything out there. We arrived at the airport, and discovered that there's not a whole lot of people taking 6:00 AM flights in the middle of the week, so going through security was quick enough: de-shoe, pull out laptop, empty pockets, wait for Erica to be hand-scanned because her belt has a little too much metal in it, and we're on our way to high-quality airport breakfast foodstuffs. Get in the air for three hours to Phoenix, AZ, meet Mike and Ai at the terminal, and hop in their rental car to head north to Page, AZ, on the southern edge of Lake Powell. Four or five hours later, we arrive, and pop into a local SCUBA shop to get directions and rent a wetsuit for Mike, and learn...

...that we have another four hours of driving ahead of us, because we're on the wrong side of the lake. When Mike and Ai reserved the houseboat we're supposed to be picking up, they didn't see that the promo material was from Lake Powell, Utah, not Lake Powell, Arizona. Which means we needed to backtrack a bit, then head northeast around the lake, then back southwest to Bullfrog marina. The downside was that we lost a ton of time (and because it was so late in the day, we missed a ferry that would have saved us at least two or three hours of driving), but the upside was that we saw some unbelievable countryside in southern Utah. Once we arrived, we unpacked on the houseboat and crashed.

The next day was what we'd come out there for: a completely un-plugged day of piloting the houseboat northward on Lake Powell and exploring some of the side canyons; given about a week, you could probably see most of the lake without much difficulty (at the speeds the houseboat was capable of; according to the spiffy little GPS unit it came equipped with, we were maxing out at just shy of 10 mph). A couple of jetskis or a faster boat in tow would have made the trip a lot more entertaining; something to consider for next time. At the end of the day, we found a secluded little cove with a proper beach and enough room for a single houseboat, tied up for the night, and spent the late afternoon and evening hiking around and swimming a bit in the rather frigid water (note for next time: go about two weeks later in the year for warmer water temperatures).

The next morning, we set off back to the marina, refueled, returned the boat, and hit the road again (this time, taking the ferry across the lake instead of driving all the way around). The road up to there is interesting; it's mostly open range, with cows popping up at random in the middle of the road, and there's a cool set of switchbacks about an hour away from the ferry that would have made for some interesting rallying if there hadn't been a bunch of other folks in the car and oncoming traffic. ;-) We pulled into Phoenix fairly late in the day; after getting everyone checked into their respective rooms, we headed out for a nice dinner at Garduno's Margarita Factory in Scottsdale (some of the best Mexican I've had, by the way), then called it a night.

Sunday morning, we grabbed breakfast from the dining room at the Chaparral Suites we were staying at, and grabbed the shuttle to the airport. Here's a tip: if you're travelling domestically out of Phoenix, you might want to consider someone other than Northwest for your flight; the line for NWA check-ins was the length of the main terminal area. Our check-in was significantly shorter, and off we flew to Calgary. We had a nice long layover there, with plenty of time to grab dinner and rest a bit, then grabbed a quick flight to Saskatoon, where the rental car was waiting for us. Two hours later, we finally made it to Unity, Saskatchewan, to spend the week with my mom.

I'd forgotten how much I appreciated the slower pace of everything in a small town. We did a little shopping, drove around a bit so Erica could grab some photos, went to my great-nephews' recital, and generally did absolutely nothing meaningful whatsoever for a week: it was everything I thought it could be. :-) Saturday night, we drove into Saskatoon again, spent the night at the Saskatoon Inn, returned the car, and started flying again; first to Winnipeg, then back to O'Hare here in Chicago. We called a cab, got home, grabbed dinner, and crashed.

Ugh. I hate flying. But it was good to see everyone again, and to take a much-needed break. Both Erica and I played tourist and snapped a bunch of pictures, if that's your thing.

I haven't touched politics here in a long time, mainly because it just depresses the hell out of me. But this fellow's story in the Washington Post really drives home the state of democracy in the U.S.

National Security Letters have gag orders attached to them: basically, you're ordered to perform some task on behalf of the FBI, without any involvement of the judiciary, and under penalty of federal time, you're not permitted to discuss the matter with anyone, especially the target of an investigation. It's like a creepy, perverse version of Fight Club for governments: "the first rule of an NSL is: do not talk about the NSL". The old phrase, "If you're not outraged, you haven't been paying attention," has never been so true as today.

One interesting thing I saw as a result of some discussion about this particular fellow's situation was the response of storage provider rsync.net: at some point, they thought about this particular problem, and propsed a solution they're calling their "Warrant Canary". Basically, once a week, they cryptographically sign a statement on their website, including a snippet of a current news headline to indicate freshness of the statement, stating that they have never been the recipients of warrent, search, or seizure of any kind. Should the updates stop for any reason, you can assume the worst. It doesn't handle the case where they are compelled to continue updating the page, but NSLs only require you to not directly disclose that you've received them, not to assert to others that you have not. In other words, they're not requiring you to lie; they're simply requiring you to not disclose that fact. (Requiring you to lie would have even more serious constitutional consequences, ignoring the whole non-judicial warrant aspect of the National Security Letters.)

It's an interesting response to the problem, and proof that we aren't under a tyrrany (which would imply the intelligence to recognize when someone was trying to skirt the rules), but are simply under the rule of incompetancy, coupled with a few groups all too eager to take advantage of that. The sad thing is, I have very little hope for the next round of elections; politicians on both sides of the aisle had no problem voting for the Patriot Act in the first place.

I can't believe I haven't lent a bit of Google juice to this before: Erica has been putting together a photography website as an offshoot of the mailing list she manages for people new to photography. She has a lot of good stuff up there regarding photography basics, composition, tools, and other basic information (with pictures, naturally). She's also put a custom Google search on there for finding photography-related stuff. Take a peek. :-)

God is a big poo-poo head, and smells funny too (PG-13 version for the younger readers at home). Glad I don't live in Massachusetts. I think I covered both the "blasphemy" portion, as well as the "contempt and ridicule" portion spelled out in their General Laws with that. What's sad is that is that Section 36 (Blasphemy) is only one of 155 other laws relating to "crimes against chastity, morality, decency, and good order", 24 of which have apparently already been repealed (no doubt due to rather obvious unconstitutionality). Glad we have that whole separation-of-church-and-state thing worked out.

...again. I now have two weeks at the new job under my belt, and I'm having a blast so far. The folks here are great, and the work environment is very fluid; if there's an itch, you're encouraged to scratch it. I jumped right into the middle of yet another data center relocation, although this one doesn't involve flying to another state to meet the equipment. ;-) Overall, I'm amazed at how quickly I've managed to come up to speed on infrastructure and administrative needs, and have almost completely moved their senior developer (who was previously handing a lot of the administrative tasks) back to what he's supposed to be doing. The technology here is a mix that's been determined by good business sense and a decent eye for what will get the job done, so so while everything might not be the latest and greatest gadgets, it's exactly what they need for now and the near-term future. They're reasonably frugal, and that's something I've missed seeing in IT; it's either "cheapskate" or "blank check" at most places.

So far, so good. I think I'm going to like it here.

It's amazing! It's fantastical! It's...er...the fishophone, from the wacky subconscious of Married To The Sea. Weird, weird stuff...

Now that everyone has been told, I can announce it: I've taken a new job, hopefully for the last time in the foreseeable future. The new company is a small shop, owned and operated by a husband and wife team who really seem to have their act together. The role I'm taking on is a basic all-around technology administration role; systems, networking, internal systems, and pretty much anything else with a power cord. Aside from getting back to a "mine to screw up" kind of role (which is really where I prefer to be, especially after the last three years of working in a larger environment), this company is located about 20 minutes from home, and that's in terrible traffic. I can't begin to describe how good having at least two hours a day of commuting time back; more time with my wife, more time to get things done around the house that have always had to wait for the weekend, and hopefully enough time to take a few minutes to relax in the evening. My current employer has already been notified, and my start date at the new place is set for June 5. I'll let everyone know where it is that I'm working after I've had a bit of time to meet everyone and get a handle on the job.

This blog update is coming from Westminster, Colorado, just outside Denver. We're (myself, Brian, and Adam) on a trip as the final "tying of loose ends" from our data center relocation from Chicago to Denver; Adam brought his wife and daughter along, while Brian and I are stag. I'll be updating a photo blog of what we see while we're here over the next two weeks.

Ugh. Have I mentioned how much I hate flying? And on top of that, I'm sitting in my hotel room watching an airplane circling an airport in Houston with blown rear tires waiting to burn off fuel so they can make an emergency landing. I hate flying.

I really don't like travelling for business, and it's almost worse having co-workers along. The upside is that there's someone you know and get along with reasonably well around to chatter with and generally keep you from getting bored after work, but the downside is that you're pretty much tied to them for the duration (what, three rental cars? I don't think so), so getting away by yourself is a little difficult. Add to that the fact that I miss my wife, dog, and those stupid goldfish, and it makes for a pretty lousy time.

Weather here has been pretty good, all things considered; they're in that spring "limbo" where it's warm one day, and it's a cool drizzle the next, but I really don't have much reason to complain. I managed to get the hotel to let me move to a non-smoking room, so after a night of coughing up phlem courtesy of the previous room, I'm feeling a LOT better now. Hopefully there'll be an opportunity to get out this weekend and see the area a bit; the mountains look great from a distance, and it'd be nice to get up there and take a few pictures.

My welding tank arrived! I ordered an 80cf tank from IOC from their eBay store, at what I'd consider a pretty good price, and no strings attached; it's a brand-new, owned-by-me, argon/co2-approved tank with a 10-year hydro certification, and with a cap for safe transportation. I'm pretty happy with it; it's about three feet tall, and won't take up a ton of space. I need to check with a local Airgas branch to see if they'll do fill-while-you-wait, rather than exchanges. Otherwise, I'll have to see about finding another welding supply company to get fills from; I'm not giving away my brand new tank, sorry. ;-)

I also got managed to get a 1/4"-thick sheet of mild steel, about two feet by four feet, for the top of my welding table thanks to Rick from the chicagodsm mailing list; he pointed me at a a shop his brother works at, who just happened to have a few big slabs of steel they were willing to carve up for me in a pinch. Thanks, guys! Now I just need to mount the 80lbs of tabletop to the table assembly I grabbed at Lowes for cheap, and I'll have a very nice place to work at.

Next up, get some gas, and attend the TIG welding class at HTP tomorrow with Erica. After that, I'm on my own, and get to figure out how to make the floorpan of my car accept the shiny new aluminum fuel cell I just bought. ;-)

I finally broke down and bought one: an HTP Invertig 201 AC/DC. It's a pretty decent unit; maximum 30A power draw (which meant an easy wiring run for it), controllable anywhere from 4A to 200, both AC and DC modes, some nifty programmable modes for production work (not that I'll need them), good duty cycles, and water cooling. The whole setup with helmet and consumables was pretty pricy, but hopefully I'll get some value out of it over the coming year with all the fabrication work I need to do on both of our project cars. Jeff over at HTP also threw in a free tig welding class, which both Erica and I will be attending this Saturday (and Albert was nice enough to give Kris and I a quick lesson a little while ago), so we shouldn't electrocute ourselves right off the bat. I still need to find a surface for a welding table, and source a bottle of Argon gas, but then we're ready to go. Whee, new toys...er...I mean, tools. ;-)

So on Saturday, we headed up to Chicago Indoor Racing for our friend Tim's bachelor party, and had an absolute blast. After you check in and watch a safety video, it's off to the change rooms to put on your fire suit, head sock, helmet, and neck brace, then you're in a go-kart that's able to do 30-35 mph without much difficulty. The package we had gave us three heats (and we had enough people that we did this in two different run groups) of 15 laps each, then the top 9 drivers were given a final heat of 30 laps to determine the winner. The steering on the karts is extremely stiff; by the end of the night, most of us were complaining about arm and shoulder soreness, and some of our less-beefy friends were having pretty serious problems by the end of their last heat. Note to self: build a bit of upper-body strength before going back out there. And we will be going back out there. :-)

Afterwards, we all headed over to Albert's place and relaxed for a bit, and we got to see the latest progress on his car. The AWD conversion is pretty much done, and he's done a dead-sexy job on both the new fuel cell setup and the new 10-point cage. With the turbo he's going with, and his current plans for the year, he's going to be breaking drivetrain components, no question about it, but he's going to have a hell of a lot of fun. :-) (Albert, if you're reading this, I WANT YOUR FUEL CELL SETUP. Damn, that's nice. And beats the hell out of what I'm going to end up fabricating to make my in-tank setup work...)

I've seen some crazy stuff in my day, but this takes the cake. Apparently, Wal*Mart (or any large employer) is the newest attempt at creating a universal health care system, without having to go through the ugly business of actually convincing the voting population that it's a good idea. I've been meaning to write about this for a while now, and this is as good a time as any.

People scream bloody murder about health insurance costs right now, and junk laws like this are the result: treating the symptom, rather than the disease. The real problem, the reason that your insurance costs so much, is because the medical procedures cost a fortune. Pull out the last medical "bill" (and I use the term loosely, which I'll explain later) you received, and look at how much each line item costs. When an typical in-patient admission averages $6400, something isn't right.

Why this costs so much requires a little critical thought: think about how the money flows here. Does the consumer pay the bill? Nope. In the vast majority of cases, the largest part of the bill is borne by a health insurance company. Do they bill the consumer directly, then? Nope. Again, in the vast majority of cases, the health insurance company bills the consumers employer, because the employer ties that benefit to their compensation package. The consumer ends up paying a percentage of the actual cost (or often nothing at all, depending on the insurance plan), and bears a monthly cost taken directly from their paycheck for the insurance plan that the employer is usually helping to subsidize.

In other words, the only market forces at work here are between the employers, the insurance companies, and the medical industry. The bottom of this cost chain is the employer for all intents and purposes (because the employee has very little bargaining power over their benefit coverage), and to the employer, the cost of health insurance is an externality: it doesn't affect them directly, so they don't care if they get a good rate or not, unless they're using it as a strong incentive to attract employees (and usually that kind of motivation is short-lived; once the employees have signed, there's little incentive to negotiate for better rates and strain relations with another business). On the health insurance side, there's also very little incentive to negotiate better rates with the medical industry: if costs rise, they can simply raise rates or reduce coverage.

That's a long-winded way to get to this: the actual cost of health care is buffered from you both by a risk-mitigation industry (the health insurance company), and by your employer, neither of which really cares if the price goes up. In the face of that, free market forces don't work. But wait, there more.

Consider the other side of the coin: the health care professional. They're in the position of needing to base their rates on what the insurance industry will pay out, not on what the customer will pay, which insulates them from the tendancy of the consumer to shop around for a better deal. However, they also have the problem of liability; if they make a mistake, they get sued. Malpractice insurance to the rescue, right? Wrong. Once again, that insurance makes the cost of liability an externality to the doctor. The victim gets a ridiculous sum of money (ie. what the court sees that the doctor or hospital can pay, which is just a function of their liability coverage), the doctor continues business as usual unless it's something criminally stupid, and the insurance company just raises rates, because it's all externalities for them. As the insurance rates rise, the medical industry raises it's rates (because there isn't a consumer in the picture helping to force the price back to a reasonable level), and the cycle continues. (Notice how I didn't say that the lawsuit was the problem; if you receive poor service in any industry, you should have the right to sue to be "made whole" again. The problem is the resulting awarded payout, based on a mythical "ability to pay" that the doctor or hospital, on their own, would never be able to realistically pay without insurance.)

Notice the common thread here? The risk-mitigation companies. In the spirit of the free market, they've created an attractive product that people are buying like crazy...because it insulates them from the free market. Without risk, that capatalist idea just doesn't work right; it makes risk an external factor that doesn't really impact you that much directly, and it's made a mess of the health care system as a result. You see the same kinds of things with the automotive insurance industry, but on a less grandiose scale; my recent front-end collision racked up a $5000+ bill to our insurance company, but no reasonable person would pay that much money to have a similar level of repair done on their own, because paying $5 for every tiny fastener that needs replacement from the dealership is ridiculous.

So, to the link at the top that started this tirade: fix the problem, not the symptom. Making employers foot the bill for a broken system isn't the way to fix things. Real change requires actually putting more than a knee-jerk's level of thought into the problem.

Cheney has some incredible new material for upcoming debates and campaign slogans thanks to an incident this past weekend.

Reporter:

Mr. Vice-President, what is your position on health care reform?

Dick Cheney:

I shoot lawyers. Next question?

Everything went as planned, and Erica and I were married in Miami on January 14, 2006 aboard the Royal Caribbean ship "Navigator of the Seas". Since I've had a few people ask me already, here's the log of what we did.

We set out from Aurora, IL on Friday morning for O'Hare, and met up with Erica's parents, brother, grandmother, and aunt there. After a little excitement before boarding (Erica's dad disappeared, people went to look for him, he showed up, and then we couldn't find the rescue party), we hopped aboard our American Airlines flight to Miami International Airport. When we arrived, I checked in with my mom and the rest of my family: they'd all arrived just fine, and were getting ready to call it a night. We grabbed a bite, and packed it in for the evening. The next morning, we split up: Erica and her mom headed to a hair appointment, and the rest of us packed up and headed for the dock, where everyone from both families finally met up for the first time. After a fairly lengthy delay, the ship was cleared for boarding about 35 minutes before we were scheduled to have the wedding, so everyone scrambled for their rooms, got ready VERY quickly, and headed to the other end of the ship for the ceremony in the ship's chapel.

The ceremony was brief, but didn't have the "cheeziness" that you would expect of a cruise ship wedding; the officiant (who had been helping us get on the ship all morning, and generally making sure everyone had the documentation and clearances they needed) treated the ceremony with the significance and demeanor you would expect for a wedding, and the other coordinator who helped us worked just as hard to keep things moving behind the scenes. The photographer was hilarious; he reminds me of Mitch, the fellow building the engine for my Eclipse, in that he was a complete geek about what he did (and I mean that in the nicest sense of the word; he really seemed to love what he did, and while he was a consummate professional about the whole thing, you could tell he loved geeking out about photography and digital imaging) and took a lot of pride in his work. Anyway, after the ceremony, we got everyone together on the staircase in front of the ship's main stage for a group shot, and then we spent the next hour running around the ship with the photographer getting pictures all over. A quick change, and we were ready to watch us leave port, and head for dinner and the welcome-aboard show. Not bad for what would normally be a lazy Saturday. ;-)

The next day was at sea, which worked out great; everyone had a chance to get the layout of the ship, see what there was to see aboard, and generally relax after a fairly "exciting" first day. We picked up our first piece of art of the cruise from "Park West At Sea", a piece on wood by Slava Brodinsky depicting the Tuscan countryside. As it turns out, we also won a serigraph by Emile Bellet, which I have no idea what we'll do with.

On Monday, we pulled into San Juan, Puerto Rico. Erica, my sister Sharon, and I all headed for Fort San Cristobal for a little sightseeing. After that, we split up and did a bit of shopping downtown, then back to the ship for dinner and a broadway musical show.

Tuesday was probably the highlight of the cruise for me, second only to the wedding. We pulled into St. Thomas, and headed immediately over to a dive shop called "Waterworld Outfitters" to make sure everyone had the necessary gear, and then we headed out with Underwater Safaris (who appear to be all part of the same company) to Buck Island, a couple of miles south of St. Thomas. First, we hit Rye Reef, which was cool, but the second dive was the impressive one: we saw the Cartanza Sr., a World War I tramp steamer that had broken up into several pieces, with an open view of the engine room and it's two engines, and a beautiful approach view of the forward bow of the ship. There was a barracuda hanging out behind one of the engines, and over the course of the two dives we managed to catch a view of a "baby" giant sea turtle, a puffer fish, and a ton of other random fishies. What a great time. That night, after a bit of shopping downtown, we watched the Ice show aboard, and grabbed dinner in the main dining room, where Sharon showed us her brand new camera that she managed to get an incredible deal on in the "shopping capital of the caribbean". ;-)

Wednesday was St. Maarten/St. Martin, and both sides of the family went on a bus tour of the Dutch and French sides of the island. We had about an hour to wander the flea market on the French side (where I managed to pick up some papaya hot sauce, and Jeff managed to barter a $300 titanium ring with a sapphire for his girlfriend down to $100), and then we headed back to the Dutch side, where Erica, Sharon, Mom, and I all wandered the shopping area, picked up some Belgian chocolate, and laughed at the store called "That Yoda Guy". We grabbed a water taxi back to the ship, ate dinner, and caught an excellent Motown performance aboard ship. Late that night, we attended the midnight Gala Buffet, then crashed.

Thursday was another relaxing day at sea, which all of us desperately needed after going full-tilt up to this point. We slept in, headed down to the art auction, and picked up a piece by Alfred Gockel called American Vet, rounding off our cruise artwork purchases. We also managed to meet up with Domcic Vladan (the afore-mentioned photographer) who gave us first cuts of our photos (and all of them, on CD), along with a very cool video slideshow of the pictures that he made for us as well. The rest of the day was spent lounging around, and eating. ;-)

On the final day of the cruise, we hit Nassau, Bahamas. Both Erica and I had been here before, so we ended up taking a late departure from the boat, and heading to the local public beach with her brother and splashing around a bit before taking a leisurely walk through the downtown area, and heading back to the boat early. We were entertained with a final show aboard ship, as well as a rather large goodbye dinner. I can't say enough good things about the service we received from our waiter and assistant waiter (Jose, from the Phillipines, and Dwayne, whose home country I can't remember off the top of my head), as well as the head waiter who spent far more time with us than I was accustomed to on previous cruises. We worked right up until the deadline to get our bags packed and out in the hall, and divvied up the photos between parental units, and collapsed for the night.

Come Saturday morning, we were up bright and early to get the early ship departure window. We were delayed quite a bit by the late arrival of one of our bags (and the non-arrival of one of Erica's parents' bags), then rushed over to the airport to catch the plane home, which I slept on most of the way back.

What a week. I'm amazed at how well things went, with 19 family members along with three sides of the families represented; much better than I expected things to go. The dive trip was incredible; I can't wait until summer when Erica and I can hit the quarry for a few more dives. The Sensus Pro units that Erica picked up for us did a fine job of logging everything (which I'll have to come up with a way of representing online), and I'm pretty much convinced that by the next time we take a serious dive trip, we'll be bringing all of our own gear. The wedding was great, and reflected us perfectly: brief and without a lot of hype and fanfare, but solemn and respectful as well. And we were able to give a few members of both families an experience that some of them would never have had a chance to have otherwise, which almost made this trip worth it all by itself.

Now I need a vacation from my vacation. ;-)

We're four days away from the big day, and I'm amazingly calm about the whole thing; as a matter of fact, the wedding is probably the lowest-stress part of this entire trip. Our wedding bands from Boone Rings arrived (pictured to the left; they're titanium with a tri-gold Mokume-gane inlay), Erica's grandmother's passport finally arrived, and we managed to get pre-registered for a few shore excursions (specifically, a dive trip in St. Thomas for Erica and I, and a big family trip around St. Maarten); all that's left is the packing, and catching a plane on Friday. While it might sound a little bit weird that we have family accompanying us on the trip, it's actually pretty cool; Erica's grandmother and aunt, and my mom and sister, have never had the opportunity to go on a cruise before, so besides being a great way for our families to finally meet each other (my family currently hails from the Great White North, eh), we're able to give a great opportunity to some family members that probably wouldn't otherwise have a chance to take part in. We're all looking forward to it, methinks.

On a completely unrelated note, Erica and I went to the Shedd Aquarium over the weekend, and while we expected the highlight of the show to be the dolphins, we actually ended up spending about an hour just sitting and watching the penguins (Gentoo penguins, to be precise). These little guys were acting like they were on crack; they'd just been fed, and were swimming at pretty much top speed around and around their pool area, in a massive school. I don't think there's anything in the world funnier than a fat penguin jumping off a rock, diving into the water, and swimming in circles like his life depended on it.

That was quicker than I expected, given the time of year: in either a week or two (depending on whether all the necessary resources can be lined up on their end), I'll be back on the train heading to a new job. It's late and I've been fighting with Radeon DRI issues on my newish desktop all night, so I'll defer on the details until later.

I can't begin to describe how good this description of what being an athiest feels like is. I'm an agnostic (or, more accurately, "apathist"; go ahead, ask me if I care if there's a deity looking down on us), but it's amazing how closely I can relate my own experiences to what he wrote.

Apparently, I'm not the only one who wishes they could get Coffee Crisp here in the US. Behold, I give you: coffeecrisp.org. Wow.

(And now, off to Cost-Plus World Market to refill my stash...;-))

So, it appears I'm still able to sell myself somewhat in an interview situation. It's been a while, but old habits are still there; that little voice in the back of the head that moderates while you ramble on about the things you've worked on, reminding you when you've gotten too technical for the audience or when they're unconvinced and need additional background on something. And old bad habits are still there; forgetting to bring printed copies of work history, and a notepad with salary history. It wasn't the end of the world; I've been working on this stuff so much for the past few days that it's all in my head right now, and it was a discussion with a recruiter, so they already had my resume on hand from prior emails back and forth. The interview portion went, I think, exceptionally well, and we'll see if I get a chance to repeat the performance for the actual target company.

Well, it happened. Some of the issues surrounding recent problems at work finally came to a head, and I was "let go". Strange feeling, that; I can't say I've ever been in a position where I'd be fired for fixing something, but that's basically what happened. I suppose this is the part where I'm supposed to reflect, realize the imperfection in myself that led me to this, and emerge a better person, but the reality is that I didn't lose my job because I did something wrong, so I'm not very likely to learn much from this other than a small lesson in human nature and business.

The upside, of course, is that I'm now free to look elsewhere, with a bit of a motivator behind my search to keep me focused. The timing of this stinks (our wedding is scheduled for January), but I feel pretty comfortable with the fact that I have a solid financial plan for the next month and a half, and a decent (albeit suboptimal) backup after that for at least a few months, which means I can ride this out into the next fiscal year if need be.

What I find really amusing about the whole situation is that a friend of mine gave her two weeks today, after they let me go yesterday. This means they're not only down by one: they're down by two, on top with the other three people they've lost over the past year (and not managed to replace, despite quite a bit of interviewing, including by yours truly). I'm glad their IPO went well; it's a shame they're hemmoraging technical talent, most likely as a direct result of the company's repositioning for it.

Oh dear god, what have I signed myself up for? We just got back from joining up for a gym membership at Cardinal Fitness in Naperville, and I'm a pretty good mess. We did 20 minutes of cardio on the stationary bikes with a 5 minute cool-down, and then spent the next 35 minutes on various machines and free-weights, and finished up with a few sets of sit-ups. I'm also on a restricted-calorie diet right now, and trying to keep track of my food intake and activity levels with the help of FitDay. We'll see how this goes; this is the first time I've added an exercise regimen to my weight-loss efforts, so I'm expecting I'll be sore for a week or two as I get into this. For the first time I've been to a gym in years, though, I actually kept up pretty well (Erica has been doing a personal regimen for a couple of months now, so I expected to be left in the dust).

I'm now a PADI-certified open-water diver. We did our four open-water dives down at Haigh Quarry over the weekend; two each day, with most of the certification-related work being done during the first three, and a tour of the quarry in our last dive. It was raining most of the weekend, but it really only lowered visibility a bit; when you're underwater, it doesn't really matter how wet it is on the surface. Water temperature was in the high 70's at the surface, and dropped a bit as you descended; as we learned the second day, it dropped a lot at the thermocline, and made me very glad we were wearing full 7mm suits (sans hood and gloves; I'm definitely investing in some gloves before we go diving again).

The first dive was really the only one I had problems on; my BCD had a few pull-release valves on it, and one of them managed to get stuck open after I descended (I assume I snagged one of my regulator lines on it). I couldn't see the bubbles behind me, but after I got the attention of one of the instrustors, he saw the problem pretty quickly. Then we were back underway trying to find the group, and my buddy, who lost me pretty quickly in the poor visibility caused by students walking along the bottom. Valuable lesson learned: the group be damned, we need to keep an eye on each other all the time; an instructor won't be watching next time.

After that, we did fine; both of us practiced a lot with our buoyancy control, now that we were properly weighted: in the confined dives, I barely had enough weight to descend. By the end of the weekend, both of us were resisting the temptation to flail our arms around like complete newbies, and overall I think we were doing pretty well. I appear to burn through air like crazy, though; after the last dive (about thirty minutes long), I'd gone from just under 3000 psi to about 750, although we suspect that the first stage was leaking; we checked the o-ring, then just swapped tanks, and you could still hear a mild hiss at the surface, but Erica didn't see any bubbles when we got underwater. I need to work on... er... working less?

At the end of the second day, we filled out our logs, had them signed off, and I received my temporary certification card. We then went home, showered, and collapsed...I was completely physically drained after that. I have no idea how the instructors can do this every weekend, then drive back to Aurora to do pool work with another class in the afternoon. I'm sure your stamina would build up after doing it long enough, but right now I have a hard enough time getting up at 5:30 every day for a desk job. But that was definitely a hell of a way to spend a weekend, and now we're all set to go diving in the Carribean when we go on our wedding cruise in January.

We both finished up the scuba classroom work tonight at our local dive shop, and both managed to get 100% on the final exam. Now it's all water work from here on out; we're scheduled for the final confined-water dive this Sunday, and we'll head out to Haigh Quarry next weekend for our four open-water dives.

I finally got around to enrolling in a scuba diving certification course, since the wedding cruise is coming up in January, and I'd like to be able to do more than float around on the surface looking at the cool stuff from a distance. Erica was certified as an Open Water Diver when she was in college, so she's taking a refresher along with me. I've finished half the classroom work at this point (and finish the last of it tonight), and we did our first "confined-water" dive on Sunday (held in a local high school pool). I suspect we'll do the second confined-water dive this coming Sunday, and then we'll do the final open-water dives down in Kankakee over the course of an upcoming weekend. At that point, I'm a certified Open Water Diver. Woot! :-)

I'm going directly to hell for even thinking this, but am I the only one who can't get a certain Tragically Hip song out of their head? (Nevermind, looks like I'm not the only one talking about this. At least I'll have plenty of company...)

Everyone's talking about New Orleans right now; looks like a pretty good mess, along with the increasing mob action and conditions everyone is in. It's beginning to look like most of underwater New Orleans is pretty much a write-off; it will be interesting to see how much money we spend trying to restore things (or if we accept that it's another disaster waiting to happen and help people relocate instead). I've been following a very interesting insider's view of how things look right now; they decided to stay behind and keep their data center operational, and have been giving a play-by-play account of what life in New Orleans is like after the hurricane. Pretty grim stuff.

Which, of course, makes recent events at work seem paltry in comparison, but it seems like the last time a major national disaster occurred, things were going pretty lousy at work too. Maybe my ongoing job satisfaction is tied in some way to national problems? I guess that means you can blame me for what happened. ;-) Anyway, that's about all I'm going to comment on regarding my employment right now; if you know me well enough, you already have the details, and if you don't, well, then I guess this blog entry wasn't for you. Sorry.

Dr. Scott Christian, you're a nice guy, but you need some practice cleaning teeth. I'd visited Wheatland Dental Care in Naperville a few weeks back, and had a perio cleaning done to the right side of my mouth by Dr. Dan Bialecki, who did a fantastic job; took a fair bit of time, and my mouth hurt like hell for a day or two, but my teeth have never felt so clean. Last night, I was scheduled to have the left side done by Dr. Christian, and I was impressed at how much faster the process went, and how little discomfort there was; at least, I was impressed until I saw the work in the mirror when I got home. My lower canines are the easiest to contrast: I couldn't feel it because my mouth was completely numb at the time, but it looks as though he didn't even touch the left lower canine. There's plenty of calculus on there that I can feel today with my tongue, and you can clearly see it when compared to the canine on the lower right. Be damned if I (or my insurance carrier) will be paying for another cleaning job; we've already rescheduled with Dr. Bialecki, and we'll see if they have the nerve to try charging me for a second cleaning.

Erica's dad had a stroke last week. We took some time off and went down there to help out and get a feel for how he's doing; he has lost most of his ability to communicate (and to a lesser degree, understand what he's being told), and quite a bit of dexterity on the right side of his body, but he's able to get up and around by himself, and he pretty clearly comprehends what is happening around him. He's having a very hard time with this, and Erica's mom isn't dealing well with it either; everyone around him is treating him like he's an invalid, when in fact he's sharp as a tack except for his language skills, and being treated like that has got to be unimaginably frustrating. He's currently in an in-patient rehabilitation center, where they're giving him with both physical and speech therapy. Sorry, I don't have any insightful things to say about this; it's just a terrible thing to have happened.

My annual road trip back to Canada is coming up; if you're a friend of mine, this is your advance notice. ;-) We'll be taking off after work next Friday, and should hopefully swing through Brandon, MB on Sunday, then we're off to Unity, SK for a week of rest with Mom. After that, we'll play it by ear; we'll probably head through southern Ontario again, and maybe hit a few places in Wisconsin on the way back to Chicago. This vacation can't come soon enough.

About a month ago, someone broke into the Laser, right in the driveway, in the middle of the night. The useless waste of oxygen stole the stereo I'd spent the weekend installing, along with her boost and A/F gauges and the gauge pillar. They apparently didn't see the S-AFC under the passenger seat, and didn't know what to do with the ECU that was sitting out on the floor. No damage was done, other than the stolen items. After talking with a neighbor yesterday, it seems we've had a rash of car break-ins over the past few months; last Friday his car was broken into, and a few weeks prior another neighbor had theirs vandallized. Back in December, he had his truck broken into, and $3000 worth of tools stolen.

So, in goes an alarm in the Laser, and I'm looking at a bit of basic home surveilance gear; ZoneMinder looks like just the thing for handing the recording, along with a cheap camera to cover the driveway, garage, and possibly the backyard. There's some pretty slick cameras that don't look like cameras available that would do a pretty decent job, methinks.

It's a shame it took an event like this to get me thinking seriously about home security, but I honestly never gave it much thought: I grew up in a small town where the idea of locking your doors at night was ridiculous, and "home security" consisted of a shotgun somewhere in the house, and neighbors who would noticed any little thing that was out of the ordinary. It's funny; I deal with weird esoteric security issues on a regular basis in my day job, but I never really applied the same thinking to my own home. Am I better off than I was now that I'm worried about the safety of my home?

The wedding plans are currently in flux; apparently, Royal Carribean chartered the entire ship we were going to be cruising on to someone, and thus our party has been bumped. I'm holding off on calling everyone until we figure out what we're going to do; we should be hearing from our travel agent today to see if RCCL will be doing something for us, or if we'll just take our business elsewhere.

I hate masking for painting. :-P We finally bought some paint for the walls in the kitchen, and hopefully sometime this week we'll have the masking and cleaning finished, and can finally get a little color up on the walls in the house. The plan right now is for each room to have a theme to it; the kitchen is going to be an italian-style kind of thing, with a lot of greens and tans along with some coffeehouse oil paintings we found at a local art gallery. The living room will probably end up as a modern glass and stainless steel look, with black and blues dominating. The bedroom is already done up in an Asian theme, with reds and browns and some cool bits and pieces we've picked up over the last few years; the upstairs bathroom currently borrows the same theme. The downstairs bathroom will probably end up with a traveler motif; maps and such, along with the postcards I collect every time I go someplace new. The front room will probably take a mix of yellow and orange, with furniture being added "as we find it"; right now, it's basically a useless room, and it'll probably turn into an area where we can sit with guests and generally fall down into when we get home from work. ;-)

That's the inside. Sometime this summer, we also want to put in a rough stone patio off the back of the house with a trellis. I'm hoping to do a pond of some kind in a year or two, but that's likely dependant on the temperament of 42 (our dog) by then.

It's official: Erica and I are getting married. Right now, the plan is to get married in Miami aboard Royal Carribean's Navigator of the Seas on January 28, 2006. From there, we'll set sail on a 7-day cruise through Puerto Rico, St. Thomas, St. Maarten, and the Bahamas. Most of our immediate families look like they'll be able to come with us, and a bit of our extended families and some of our friends, so it should be a great time all around. In case you're wondering, Erica already has her ring; it's a "very good" diamond (according to Erica, anyway), in a titanium "tension" setting, which makes it just about the perfect geek ring. ;-)

Merry Christmas, Chanukkah, Kwanza, Festivus, Boxing Day, or just the day off!

After getting hit by another cold (which Erica got too, this time), and surviving Christmas celebrations in three households this year, I'm actually finding myself glad to be back to work; words cannot describe how busy this past weekend felt. On Friday, we visted with Erica's father's side of the family; on Saturday, it was her mom's side. Finally, we wrapped up the weekend at her parents' house all day Sunday. Somewhere in there, I managed to give Erica her new pocket bike, I received a ton of tools and miscellaneous garage stuff (yay, metric bolts and a good digital caliper!), and Erica kept a Marshall household tradition alive by making strawberry waffles for Christmas morning (and several mornings afterward; we mixed up a wee bit too much).

(On the subject of that pocket bike, I had no idea there was such an aftermarket for these things; it makes sense, but I hadn't really thought about it. I'm now trying to think of ways to convince Erica that she needs all manner of engine upgrades for it, even before we've started it for the first time...)

It was busy, but it was a good weekend all around. No drama, but plenty of good food, and lots of smiling faces. The cynic in me will have to admit a loss, and go back to harping on Sweetest Day instead. ;-)

That's right, I'm now officially an old fart, according to the still-17 side of my personality...I'm 30 today. Woot. Only ice cream can help me now. :-D

This blog entry is being written ssh'd back home from a Sun training class; ah'm gonna lern me some o'dem dere SunFire High-End Server whatchamahoozits. (It's a class on the basics of the 12/15/20/25K architectures, along with SMS, domains, hardware configuration, etc.) Beats the hell out of sitting in a cubicle all day, and hey, it's always fun breaking someone else's workstations when you're bored in class. ;-)

So, I've been lax in updating this thing. I'll see if I can post up a few updates today.

Erica's been incredibly busy at work lately; the had a major problem last weekend with their MS Exchange server, which required basically rebuilding it from scratch and trying to restore the old data. In the middle of that, she got a call about her grandmother Nonie (her real name was Iona, but everyone called her "Gram" or "Nonie") having passed away. So, she worked basically straight through from Friday until midway through Monday, then we took off Tuesday and Wednesday for the wake and funeral. Everything was well-organized and respectful, as such things tend to be in smaller communities; only the weather chose to be disagreeable, with frozen rain coming down on the ceremony at the cemetary, but it was followed by a wonderful lunch put on by church volunteers.

Two days later, I'm sick and miserable with a cold. :-P Ah well, I'm mostly back to 100% at this point, and looking forward to the weekend.

Yesterday, Erica's boss (who she's never met) finally came into town, so we went out to dinner with him and her office's regional exec. Yay, dinner with two executives. At least the food was good. ;-)

Tonight, we're doing dinner with a friend from work and her husband for her birthday at Meson Sabika, then tomorrow it's a combination of "National Ravioli Day" (it's a tradition in Erica's family; every year, around the same time, the whole family and anyone else they can convince to come over gets together and makes ravioli from scratch all day, and then consume large quantities of it), and then Erica's office Christmas party. At least I get to sleep in on Sunday...

Okay, this is funny.

I went to the polling place, I filled in the little circles, and I put my paper ballot into the little machine for counting. I feel relatively sure that my vote was counted correctly, as were those of others in my constituency. I feel confident in the results of the election; despite those on the far left crying foul about the statements of Diebold's CEO (promising to deliver Ohio in the coming election) and putting on their tin-foil caps, I'm pretty sure that here in DuPage County, Illinois, we were represented accurately.

I also feel a little bit disturbed. We, as a nation, just vindicated the choices made by the administration over the past four years: the good ones, and the bad ones. To our credit, we sent a well-spoken black man to the Senate, and to my dismay, we sent a low-brow ruffian back to the White House. We created, through our electoral process, a completely Republican state: Congress, Senate, POTUS, and, due to the declining health of Hon. Judge Renquist, the Supreme Court.

I was hoping for a restoration of the balance in government that we've lacked over the last four years; we've witnessed domestic policy tinted with religious fervor, and global policy based on military superiority. Instead, we've chosen to re-affirm that course. The PATRIOT Act will remain in force for four more years, grossly violating the rights of the citizenry to feel secure in their day-to-day dealings. The Digital Millenium Copyright Act will continue to pressure bright programmers to seek employment in other countries, or imprison them in this one. We will continue to set domestic policy for other sovereign nations, with or without the support of the global community behind us. And we will continue to increase our level of indebtedness to the countries of that global community, with deficits that only a few years ago would have seemed ludicrous.

We've made our choice. May we have the representation we deserve.

Yeesh. Everyone I know is gah-gah over politics lately. "Bush is a right-wing neo-nazi!" "Kerry's a flip-flopping liberal traitor!" "Nader for Pres...er...Nader for Being on the Ballot!" Good grief. But, I'm still stuck with the choice of who to vote for shortly. The problem is, I don't like any of these clowns, and the more I learn, the less I like them.

Bush wants to take away my personal privacy and violate my civil rights, wants to take the choice of when and how to bring a child into the world out of the mother's hands, seems to have a religious agenda that's incompatible with both my beliefs and the concept of separating church and state, and doesn't seem to bat an eye at invading a sovereign nation with a nebulous goal of "gittin' terrists". His administration also has far too much interest in the sexual and other private habits of the citizenry. Perverts. Stay the hell out of my bedroom, Ashcroft.

Kerry and the Democrats, on the other hand, would love to take away the means for a private citizen to defend themselves, institute large numbers of social programs that I'd pay for (but wouldn't help me in the slightest), and generally spend a lot of money and pass a lot of laws "for my own good". Father knows best; we wouldn't want you to have to be responsible for your own actions or anything terrible like that. They've also made a mockery of the democratic process by doing their damnedest to keep Nader off the ballot (it's painfully obvious why they're doing it, but it's still incredibly rude of them.) And the latest news from the Kerry campaign is that Bruce Lehman (from the original Clinton administration) has signed on as the fellow for crafting the campaign's position on intellectual property (you may assume that I consider him as bad a choice for this role as I considered Ashcroft for Attorney General).

Then there's Nader. He's more than a little nuts, and although he makes a token showing each year, there's really very little hope of this fellow actually making it into office, especially without the backing of a party of any kind. A vote for Nader is a vote for Mickey Mouse, at the end of the day.

Oh, let's not forget my favorite marginallized party, the Libertarians. While their party platform is the closest to my views of the bunch, they've consistantly put themselves on the sidelines by failing to effectively market themselves and selecting unknowns as their party favorites. Who the devil is Michael Badnarik? Why is his website a jumbled mess of random thoughts? But hey, free bumpersticker. ;-)

So, who do I vote for? In the end, I have to pick the one I think will do the least damage. Bush took us to war, without much in the way of credible reason to do so, other than the fact that he wanted to pick up where his father left off. I also voted for him four years ago. But I don't see that happening this year; the least damage, in the end, will probably be done by the bumbling fool rather than the aggressive idiot; congratulations, George, you scared off even the conservative contingent that I usually find myself siding with. I love politics. :-P

A highly-conservative friend of mine (don't hold it against him ;-)) is working on getting a photography business off the ground, so I've had my head back into random picture-taking lately. So I was happy to come across Stephanie Troeth's blog, which is adorned with much cool piccy-type-stuff. Would you believe I came across this searching for "shift key" on Google?

Just got back from vacation (which is why there's been a flurry of updates); Erica and I spent a week up in Unity, Saskatchewan with my mom, helping out around the house and generally getting a little rest for a change. It's unbelievable how much cleaner the air is out there compared to Chicago, and more generally, how quiet and slow life is for most folks, as opposed to the average worker-bee in the city. It's fantastic unplugging for a while; puts the job, bills, and life in general into the proper perspective.

Woo! I finally got my new air compressor wired up; it's a Campbell-Hausfeld VT6195, taking single-phase 240V power to drive it's 2-cylinder cast iron motor, and holds a monstrous 60 gallons of air. After nearly electrocuting myself, I filled her up with oil last night and powered it up, without any problems. There's a small leak where I attached the shutoff valve that I need to fix, but it's basically working. Now I just need to get the hose, regulator, and other fun stuff connected and mounted, and I'll be set to get back to porting out the inlet of my intake manifold (and thus finally working toward the Eclipse running again).

I've told everyone I meet day-to-day, but apparently I forgot to mention it here, so here goes: I've been back on a low-carb diet again, having apparently gotten myself into the right mindset to stick to it. Two and a half months later I've dropped 36lbs, with the plan being to drop another 30 or so and pick up a little more muscle along the way. I'm pretty happy with the results. And there's nothing quite so good as knowing you can eat all the cheesecake (made with Splenda and no crust) you want.

So, we bought the house. The broker we used, unfortunately, ended up delaying closing by almost 24 hours because they didn't have something together on their end (the broker, if you're curious, is Prime Financial), but the sellers were cool about it. We spent the entire weekend moving stuff, with the help of Erica's parents and brother, then every night last week after work moving more stuff and cleaning the apartment up. We're currently living out of boxes in the new house, but it's getting there; I even have enough room in the garage to work on my car again.

In other news, last Wednesday night (the only night we weren't moving and cleaning), we met up with a friend of mine who was celebrating his 30th birthday at Medieval Times, and bumped into another friend who I'd worked with/for in a previous (work) life. A good time was had by all, and the Green Knight saved the day. ;-)

The Laser is done! We finally got it back a couple of days before we closed on the house, which really saved us a couple of times; you can pack a ton of stuff in that car. After just shy of 500 miles of break-in, we changed the transmission fluid (and noted the build-up of shavings on the magnetic drain plug...ugh), installed a modified non-turbo K&N FIPK and catch can, and headed down to Joliet for another JSCC autocross event. I took first place in D class, which was rather nice considering I was getting used to a new track (they had to do a new layout from last year) and a new car; even old-timers were getting DNF's for getting lost on the new course, so I consider that a success. ;-)

New ISP: we switched from Speakeasy (because they didn't offer anything faster than IDSL for our new house) to DataFlo, and are now on a 1.544Mbps down, 384kbps up (same as before) connection, running over licensed fixed-wireless. Very nice stuff; the roof-top antenna is very small, and it terminates in a bridged ethernet drop. Since I had to re-do most of my router settings to account for the new network structure (WAN address and a routed /30, vs. the pair of bridged addresses I had before), I took the opportunity to get my 802.11g 54Mbps wireless card working properly. So now, I have an internal wired network, and internal WEP wireless network, a DMZ, and an external link, along with Squid caching everything everyone does (and zapping ads); I'm pretty happy with the result. The rack is technically in my new office, but the equipment is still sitting on the floor, as other moving matters took precedence. ;-)

So, I've been busy. REALLY busy. I've been doing so much non-tech-related stuff that I've decided to pull my blog off of Advogato and maintain it here (with the help of Pyblosxom). Let's see if I can mumble through most of the highlights.

Work: Major re-org at $EMPLOYER. I'm now a part of a crack commando unit sent to prison by a military court for a crime they didn't commit. Er, wait, that was me channeling the A-Team. I'm part of a much smaller group now, although I still have the same boss, and most of our resposibilities are for systems that aren't 24/7 critical, thankfully. Most of the UNIX system administrators here are in one of three or four major groups, and we're all spinning our wheels trying to figure out how to re-create most of the shared resources we used to have available. I'm baby-sitting some new systems now, and I was pulled off a couple that I'd built and helped along originally. Nothing too bad, just...different. Not the kind of organizational changes that everyone can adapt to well.

Personal: Buying a house. We're less than a week away from closing as I write this, in sunny Aurora, IL. Two floors, big backyard, three bedrooms, 1.5 baths, 2-car garage, and way more room than we have in the apartment right now. I have this fear of me becoming one of those guys on TLC who starts a major renovation, and then needs someone to bail him out.

More personal: I've been SICK. Words cannot describe how bad I've felt for the last week...some kind of cold that started out with fevers, sinus problems, and complete lack of energy, and is finishing off with fits of coughing, sinus problems, and complete lack of energy. Blecch. Too much information, Matt? That's what you get for sending me a complaint about me not blogging enough. ;-)

I've been playing around with Subversion lately. I have to say, I'm impressed; they're very close to being able to self-host, which is a huge milestone. I'm gearing up to put this website under SVN control, which ought to force a more in-depth examination on my part.

Other stuff; let's hear it for PEAR's DB.php. Now, where's the CSV version? (CSV == comma-separated values) Even Perl has DBD::SCV. I'll have to look around and see if anyone has done something like SQL::Statement for PHP (probably not, so I'm not sure it if it's worth tackling such a project at the moment).

At work: More rumors of cash running out and further layoffs. Everyone (including some members of management) has their resume out there right now. It's a shame that things have been allowed to get this bad; mismanagement of funds, improper planning of development, stop-and-go release schedules, and a schizophrenic sales approach. *sigh*

Whew.

Finally upgraded my mail/web system to Red Hat 7.2 beta (Roswell). All filesystems are now ext3 with journalling enabled, with no noticable performance difference (actually, testing by others implied that it should be faster than before). They switched over to using grub as the default boot loader (LILO is still there, for those stuck on it). No major breakage, although it was a bit of a PITA merging the Apache httpd.conf files.

Two new certifications from BrainBench: "Master, Unix Korn Shell Scripting" and "C". I'm relatively impressed; the tests actually seem to work the topic pretty well. In a similar vein, my refamiliarization with PHP spurred me into redoing my online resume. Looks a LOT better than previous incarnations.

An old friend came to town this week on business; haven't seen him in about 7 years, and it was pretty cool catching up on where he's at now, and sort of comparing notes over the last few years. He now has two kids, and a work-from-home (most of the time) job doing Java development for a company in England. Not too shabby, although the tech downturn seems to have hit his company too.

Started refreshing my memory on Java again, writing my usual refresher application: a multi-user chat system. It seems to give a good balance; you need to be able to handle a TCP listener and multiple incoming connections, pass messages back and forth, and keep track of logs. It's a good language workout. I've decided that java.io.* is simply overkill, though. I mean, do you really need that many ways to handle input and output? Yeesh.

Haven't been exercising much lately; life seems to have become very busy. Hopefully we'll get down to a Tae-Kwon Do club sometime next week to see how we like it.

Methinks this cycling regimen is going to kill me. ;-) Here's a piece of personal information that likely noone wants: I'm seriously overweight, to the tune of about 60-70 pounds (I'm Canadian born and bred, and I was still raised to weigh myself in pounds, not kilograms; go figure), so I've been researching effective ways of reducing that surplus. I've been taking two approaches: diet, and exercise. Well, okay, I've put off the exercise as long as humanly possibly, but the will to remain on a fixed low-carb diet just isn't there.

So, I'm back on the bike with Erica. Last night was 5.6 miles, and tonight we did about 4.5. Not very far, but enough to make me realize just how out of shape I am. Once the temperatures around here start cooperating (this evening was about 81 degrees, which is fine, but during the day it's pushing 90-95), I'm going to try and make myself bike to and from work (it's a three mile ride). I gotta admit, it's nice being active again. We're discussing finding a Tae Kwon Do club in the area and signing up (I used to study it, and Erica has always wanted to try), which would add a little variety to the evening routine. Here's hoping I manage to knock a few pounds off this way.

In my quest to add some credibility to my resume (I've been working in the industry for approaching ten years now, and have almost no certifications or "marks of note" to wave at someone, although it's never really proven to be much of a hindrance), I finally checked out BrainBench after some prodding. I gave it a whirl with the free Linux Administration (General) exam; on the first try, without preparation, I managed to get 4.82 out of 5, which apparently qualifies me as a "Master" (the results page proclaims, "Scored higher than 99 percent of all previous test takers"). Cool, although I'll take that with a large grain of salt. Hmm, looks like there's a free test for ksh scripting too; I'll have to take a whack at that one too when I have a little more time handy.

D-day for my co-worker; he submits the resignation today (he signed on the dotted line for the other company already, and they're itching to get him on-board as soon as humanly possible). Still mixed feelings about it, but it's still an excellent move for him; I wish him the best of luck.

I swapped out the Compaq S910 monitor (19" monitor, not too shabby) with a Sun (Sony, really) CPD-4410 perfectly flat 19" monitor (the same screen I work with at home). Sorry, but there's really no comparison; my eyes are thanking me profusely for the upgrade.

In other news, a co-worker (the one I was concerned about being cut during the recent layoff) is >this< close to finalizing an offer at another company, which means he's giving notice on Monday. It's a good move for him; better pay, far more interesting environment in terms of the stuff he gets to work with compared to here, and far less stress about "Will the company be here next week?". On the flip side, it sucks for those of us staying behind, because that's the entire NT administration workload falling on us. I'm happy for him, and I'm looking for another job. ;-)

Stayed out too late last night with co-workers and friends at a local club; got to bed at 2:00 AM to be greeted with >bzzrt< >bzzrt< this morning at 7:00 AM. Why in the hell do places have Ladies' Night and $1.75 you-call-it drink specials (no, I don't drink, but everyone I was with does ;-) on a Thursday? Have some pity on the poor male bastards who get dragged along for the fun...

Of course, we're all going out again tonight to a nearby comedy club, so I guess I'm doing it to myself. This was so much easier when I was back in school,...;-) It's fun being back in the swing of going out with friends again, though; I've been keeping my nose buried behind a monitor far too long.

Well, I finally bit the bullet and whipped up my own little weblog in PHP (just like, apparently, everyone else on the web). The next piece that I need to write is a quick-n-dirty updater for Advogato, Kuro5hin, and SourceForge, so that whenever I post something here, a link to it appears on the other sites. Shouldn't be too hard to whip up, but we'll see.

(If you're wondering what this thing actually does right now: not much. The subject and body are stored in timestamped files, which PHP indexes, reverse-sorts, and blats out to the browser formatted correctly. I expect to get links to particular articles working next.)