back at work

Ya know, it's monday for me on tuesday. I apparently missed a bunch of fun yesterday with the fun and exciting projects of doom. Don't want to be here today. Too much to do, not enough time, too many idiots.

ah, a day off

I finally took a day off. i got to the point of going round and round thinking "I can't take day off because of " and not being able to find a day to take off, so I just said screw it and I'm gone today. Titanic exhibition, lunch at Pierponts, then a bunch of errands and we'll be back here continuing to move stuff around by 1 or so. Which is a good thing because it's supposed to be stinking hot today. I love summer, really I do.

words on a page

waking. mist. driving. donuts. breakfast. net. We went out for dinner last night to the Tokyo Japanese steak house to celebrate our respective successes lately. I caught the shrimp the chef tossed at me! Back home and I started to play SimCity3000 while my lovely bride worked on some study stuff - she's starting an Internet class at Park in a week, so she was doing some pre-work. 4 hours later we went to bed. I HAVE to stop playing games like that. I was doing pretty well too! Today we are moving furniture and cleaning. Yay Us.

done!

i is now a ccna. I am able to do... nothing extra on top of what I used to. But it looks good on ye olde resume.

ta tarantata

today is the day - ccna 2.0 time. I'm taking the exam at 1:30, so I'll be zooming down 435 at 12 or so, grab some lunch and then go and do this thing. Yesterday wasn't such a good day. I had way too little sleep and way too much work to do, some stuff didn't come off the way I wanted it to, but it will all work out, and I'm off on monday. My coffee is brewed, so it's time for a quick, review, shower, some cuddling and then zoom!

yawn

too much going on today. I just spent a couple of hours working on the evil project of doom. This is bad as it means a lot more work to do in order to complete the project. ew. On the upside, my lovely bride has finished her associates as of 12noon today! Yay her! Must finish build document and get the hell out of here. Zoom.

wah

it was a VERY long day today. I don't know what it is, but I've been having real trouble getting out of bed in the morning. My continued troubles at work (overwork more than anything else) just exhaust me to the point of sleeping like a log but waking up tired every morning. My ability to hurl myself out of bed in the mornings is still present, but it's taking to the 2nd cup of coffee to be awake. I had a whole 1.5 hours today to do any work at all, let alone finish anything. I have 4 build documents to write tomorrow, and to review the hardware configuration of one of my projects, and decide how the LDAP server will fail across between two servers, and order 76 181GB drives for the Albatross project, and not go insane in between. Not to mention chasing up every little thing that goes wrong with anything I have ever touched. Not good. Every so often, I catch myself mentally totalling up how long it is to go on this contract and I remind myself to not think that way lest I do dumb things. The albatross project continues. We have levelled out on overhead in the database so instead of 20% growth, we're now seeing 6%. This is a good thing as it means that extra storage puts us into next year, and then I'll have a fighting chance to rework the system and get some 6800's into the network. Go me. Anyhow, some final review sessions before my testing on Saturday. Should be fun. I then get to try and sleep before the day begins tomorrow. Ugh. Toodles.

sunday, is it already sunday?

where did the day go? yesterday was *HOT*. It was 115degF by the old heat index, and it was unpleasant to be out. So we went to the movies instead. Do not waste your money on Jurassic Park III, unless you're willing to pay for just the special effects. The story is an extension of the original, the special effects are great, and I was really left wondering whether this was all that Tea Leoni could find do to post-child. Made a beeline after that for home. Watched "Life of Brian" - i am covered for my python fix for a couple of weeks.. for now. Our next door neighbours have moved to Austin - whcih is sad, because we really liked them. But it was for work, and it is the season. I'm watering our lawn and theirs for the next couple of weeks until the new neighbours move in. They're apparently very nice, so we'll hopefully have a good set of neighbours. Another 30 minutes and the lawn will have had an hour. Don't know what's on the agenda for today - it's supposed to be hotter than yesterday, so I think inside the house work is on. It's all very domestic, isn't it?

<elton john> saturday! saturday! saturday! </elton john>

yes, it's saturday! Last week was a very long one, and full of battles that I shouldn't have had to fight. On the upside, my director knows who I am and what she can expect out of me when she asks questions. Just went out to water the lawns, as it's going to be stinking hot. Audrey 3, the 3" plant that grew to 2.5' before it snapped on a windy day is back and growing! It will not die! My lovely bride received her new laptop and ipaq yesterday and so has been madly trying out all the lovely flashy bells and whistles. I must say, I do like the screen on the ipaq, but we'll see how it goes. I get her IIIc in return to replace my aging IIIx, which is starting to show its age with the screen having some big time problems. In other news, it's off to the movies today. I've been convinced to go see Jurassic Park III, for better or worse. Ok, time to go turn off hoses, it's been an hour and it'll be stinking hot soon.

i'm the real slim shady

I have stood up. End transmission.

awooga!

I've been up since dark o'clock working on a presentation for my director to take to the application types director as to why the evil project of doom must get some clue regarding their disk storage. I am not in a fit state to do much, so come 3:30pm, I'm out of here.

i am ready

for my ccna 2.0. I know I'm making this out to be more than it is, but this is the first real cert (other than oracle) that I'm sitting for. In other news, there were LOTS of thunderstorms last night. Not a lot of damange, but plenty of lightning and rain. I slept through it, of course, but it was apparently very cool according to my lovely bride :-) Chinese tonight, and laughing at any "reality" tv that is on. Tomorrow is friday, and given that the boss in on leave, I'm gone once it hits 4pm.

blaugh

time for bed. it's been a long day, but I have some studying to do.

back from shopping

made it back from the grand day out shopping. Spent some $$, made my girl happy. Bout a few christmas/birthday presents, and now I'm going over my CCNA notes. Whee.

argh

I hate having a headache on the weekend. So, I wake up at 8, and go and get donuts. (Reminder to self: email Felix and let him know about Lamars, and demand he visit next time he's in the US. I'll get him to see the light). They had the two-tone knots, so that made my lovely bride happy. We munch on donuts, then I go mow lawn. The lawn is doing pretty well. I thought I had burned it a bit with the turf builder and weed killer I had put down, but it seems to be coming back. It was a little hot at 9ish, I should have mowed THEN gone and got breakfast. Then we went and saw "Legally Blond". The deal was that she would see "Cats and Dogs" with me if I would see "Legally Blond". I didn't give up on the deal, and so I had it inflicted on me. Ohmigod was it stupid. But then again, I did know roughly what to expect. But still, I wasn't prepared for the utter unbelievability of the movie. It was sweet and cute and perky, and that's about it. And I got a hotdog out of it too. Sweet. Then it was haircut time. I am NEVER postponing a haircut again. The past week has been evil thanks to the heat, but now I am shorn and able to get air to my skin. Aaah. Now I'm about to watch "Deep Blue Sea" then cook some burgers and cuddle with my girl. I like Saturdays. This time next week we should be celebrating my CCNA, but we'll see.

and then there was the weekend...

you know, this week really sucked. And it didn't just suck for me, every single person I asked about this week told me that it sucked more than usual. For me, it was finding out that my albatross project is going to be out of storage in August. 3TB is not enough for them, they'll need 10TB by the end of March '02. You realise that you can only fit 14TB of storage into a 8730-73? That means no BCVs for you! Gah. That was after the conference calls at 8, 8:30, 9 (which was also me leading the meeting), 11, staff meeting from 1-3, meeting from 3:30 to 4:30. Gah. I though Friday was supposed to be an easy day! My cube mate has been in Chicago for the week, and is back on Monday. I wrote out the list of things to do on Monday before I left and I cannot believe I have so much to do. On the plus side, I'm ready for the CCNA 2.0 test, I think. I really need to play with a router or two plus a switch, but I'm waiting for my tax return from Australia (which I should be getting RSN, and should be big) before I start buying hardware. Sick as it is, I'm really wanting SGI hardware. I miss SGI hardware. Heck, I miss Unix in general. Wah. On the plus side part II, it's Friday night and I have nothing to do tomorrow but mow, see a movie, go out for lunch and dinner, and that's about it. Yay.

bah!

I am just so tired of having to deal with every little burp that comes up in any of my projects. I have so many build documents to be done with by Friday 9am (for which I am also running the meeting!) that I don't know where to start. Well, actually, I do, but I don't wanna. It rained on me this morning. Not badly (I drove through the worst of it). On the plus side, it's Wednesday and I can waste my time in the meetings I have from 2 until 5. I have Mt Dew. I'm caught up on the project of doom. I am not a fish. I am not me, they are not us, we are not then. One of my good friends just got engaged. It's 2 days until the weekend.

and so it goes part II

bitsy kind of day today. Got up lateish (like 9am), finished off a couple of upgrades to the rebuilt laptop, wrote up some ideas for projects, surfed a little, did dishes and started laundry. Then my lovely bride awoke and we headed over to the parents-in-law to water the garden (have I mentioned its been hot here lately?), then had lunch at Backyard Burgers (mmmmm!), hit Home Depot for a fertiliser spreader (the grass is looking ill), BB&B for a study table and pillow for my lovely bride, now we're at home, the laundry is done and the trash is out, and all we're waiting for is for the sun to start going down so we can water and get the fertiliser out onto the lawn. Yay for domesticity. I've also been pondering the network-at-home question thats been bugging me. Once we have the bills paid we have a bunch of $$ left over. It is time, I think, to put in not only wireless but also the firewall and Unix box ready to get the cable modem run. $#!@#@!!! SWBell and $!@###$!@$#!@#!@#!@##!@@#!!!! Sprint don't run DSL/ION out here, so I'm left with RoadRunner at the moment, although Earthlink is likely to be available sometime soon. Ew. Anyhow, plotting continues. Updates as the hardware purchasing continues.

you'll be pleased to know...

that "Battlefield Earth" is the worst movie known to man. I want the 1hr52min of my life back, and I'll sue to get it! Truly horrid movie. Anyhoo - it's going to be a scorcher today! It's about 90 now and it's just gone 10am! My laptop is basically back to where it was, with the exception of OpenMail MAPI's and the eRAS garbage. Runs a lot better than NT 4.0 as well. Don't know what the plans are for today - I think "legally blonde" is opening, and given that I saw "cats and dogs" at the sacrifice of my lovely bride, I think I can break down and see it. Toodle pip.

and so it goes..

spent most of today rebuilding the laptop. Reinstalling stuff, trying to figure out IR and why Palm and Microsoft suck so badly at doing it. Looks like its still going to be the sync cable. It was BLOODY hot here today - heat index was like 105-110degF. Ew! It will be hotter tomorrow, apparently. Whee. More downloads, more time wasted - I should just wait until Monday and do this across that nice 100baseT connection at work, but that means I'll have to spend time I don't have on Mondays. Oh, and i have to eRAS working as well. Off to watch Big Brother and Battlefield Earth. The latter is just to see how truly horrid it was. Toodle whom.

well that was an unpleasant couple of hours...

I decided it was time to upgrade my Office 97 to Office 2000. A mistake. The 1023 cylinder stupidity came into play and suffice it to say, I now run Win2K Professional and Office 2K and it only took 8 hours. Ew. Long day. Someone summed it up perfectly this afternoon - "this week has had 2 Mondays, 2 Fridays and 2 Sundays. No wonder we didn't get anything done". Off to the Nelson tomorrow and stocking up for the 100degF weather thats on it's way. So now I sleep.

arugh

home again, and so very tired. Actually, it's not too bad, but my lovely bride has just been completely wiped out by the heat. I predict that the weekend will mostly be spent inside, due to it getting mighty close to the 100degF mark. Ew. Very little of use got done today. It wasn't a Monday because there was very little angst and hue and cry and throwing of hands, but it most definitely felt like Monday. I really need a vacation. It's becoming more and more obvious that as the days go on that I'm getting tireder and tireder and am dropping more and more small things that I would have done right if I wasn't as pooped as I am. That's not an excuse, it's a reality. In other news, the project of doom appears to have resolved its albatross (yeah, them 6500's with 12 CPUs and 12GB of memory will run that Oracle database pretty darn well even with 12,000 people hitting it - so STOP SAYING IT IS THE DATABASE, YOU JACKASSES!) and we're moving on to take over the world^W^W^W^Wmake the app stable. Surfing by barnes and noble to pick up some cert stuff. I am >< close to taking both Solaris 7 and CCNA. I go cook dinner now.

too goddamn early

It's too early! We got home at dark o'clock this morning after the fireworks at Parkville, and after blowing up some small stuff at my brother- and sister-in-laws. Pretty cool, if only we didn't have to wait around until 10pm for it all to happen. It definitely feels like Monday. In other news, I'm pretty darn close to being ready to take my CCNA. I've got mebbe 3 more review sessions and I'll be setting up my test slot. Saw "Cats and Dogs" with my lovely bride. Lovely (if sappy) bit of children's film, but the beagle puppy is so cute! Must get things done today.

this is not a drill

it's my first 4th in KC! I have been fully apprised of the central nature of blowing shit up to celebrate the birth of a nation, courtesy of the fireworks that have been going off in the neighbourhood since the 1st. The vacation in the middle of the week sucks. I am just going to be off for the whole week now, and with the number of people at work who wisely took the rest of the week off, it's difficult to get anything done. In other news, my cubemate is heading to chicago for a week to do Veritas training, so I will be gloriously un-cramped for 5 days, then he's back for a week, then he's on vacation for 2 weeks. I can get so much done instead of us tripping over each other. Rule. I'm also madly trying to get my CCNA 2.0 testing set up so I can get at least one cert under my belt before the end of July, and then get cracking on the Oracle, Sun and CCDA certs. It's tough trying to find time to study, but it's working out. It's also the end of the finanical year in .au, so I'm expecting a major tax refund due to the vagaries of the .au tax system. Basically, it works like this: I got taxed as if I was earning the full amount of $$ for the year. But I only worked 6 months of it. Therefore, I will be assessed as only having earned as a salary for the whole year a whopping 50% of what I was taxed at. This means that I paid 50% tax on 50% of my salary, which ends up being $BIG_NUM of pesos. Year, it's in PacRim pesos, but I'm not going to sneeze at it. I should be able to pay back my parents and pay off my visa card bill and have a sizeable chunk of change left over to finally buy a *nix based system or 3. I'm slowly going mad without access to a Unix system, or at least that's how I'm justifying the purchases that are coming down the track. i also need to put wireless in cuz I'm sick of trailing a phone cord wherever I go to get online. If TWC and Earthlink would get their shit together, I'll hand over shekels to them for cable modem access. Which reminds me.. time to send my weekly email to them. Toodles - don't blow yourselves up, and consume much food!

long time, no update

Been a busy boy. Too many sev1's to even scratch myself. Much has been going on. It's been icky nasty weather so there hasn't been much outside activity. It was my mum's birthday on Friday, so I called her while on my way home and had a good old natter with her at 75mph. Went to see Moulin Rouge on Saturday - excellent movie, but weird. Went out to see the cows (www.cowparadekc.com) on Sunday morning, then pottered around. Much to do today. Off now.