March 2007 Archives

The windows box just imploded the network drivers again. I tried restoring it the same way that I did before, but it was a no go. Given my options, I'm thinking I'll just migrate the little bit of my work that is left on the windows box and say goodbye. I don't have the time to deal with the long involved process of cleaning up after the crappy software that is microsft windows.

One of my co-workers found out yesterday that he may be deployed to Iraq.

are useless.

So the boss walks in today and says "I promised [*The Big Boss] that he could have this website by tomorrow. Come see me in 10 minutes and we'll go over it."

Did I mention how often this happens? I really do enjoy my job and this happens everywhere, not just here. But we are not talking about a simple little thing. We are talking about roughly 20 pages of content that must look nice.

So of course, everything else gets put on hold until this is done.

*Name excluded to protect the innocent

Moms get to experience all of the joys and pain of pregnancy. Dads usually just get the end result (broken hand, screaming kid).

For me, I look forward to the first kick or movement that I can feel. The wife has been feeling small movements and kicks for a couple of weeks now and I know that the little monster inside her will react when I place my hand on her belly but not in a manner that I can feel. This evening changed that.

As I performed my evening ritual of poking and prodding at the little monster in an attempt to elicit a reaction I was greeted with movement. Whatever the little monster had been pushing up with (head, back, butt, foot, hand) moved across my finger and quickly vanished. Moments later, there was even some quick jabs at my hand that were very distinct.

Soon, I will have another little monster to mold and mentor in the ways of the Dark Side.

The technology battlefield is littered with casualties. The walking wounded have gone mad and are turning on the very people that they need to survive.

As I write this, I am using Firefox on a Fedora Core Linux Operating System. The hardware is ancient but reliable in todays terms. The windows box sites idle (except for the nightly virus-scan) and may soon be delegated to running linux as well. I have been slowly moving away from costly Microsoft solutions and have only held on for this long because of my gaming habits. After my windows machine took a dive this last week I began working to get a GUI (Graphical User Interface) on at least one of the linux boxes so that I would have a backup should windows decide to dive again.

I have no desire to go thru the hassle of re-activating my XP install when it comes time to clean the machine of it's many ghosts and the thought of Vista makes me want to swallow jet fuel. Slowly but surely, Microsoft is alienating the very people who would have helped to keep it alive.

Rain. That's all I've seen for 3 days. Rain.

If I miss anything about Oklahoma, it's the rain. I've enjoyed the last 3 days and all of the thunder and lightning that came with it. Of course, they are still learning about flood control around here and in some cases have ignored it completely. Major roads are closed and under water, people are still trying to drive through high water, and we still have the mulch fire.

Maybe I'll go to the zoo today.

I am beginning to feel an increasing hatred towards my only windows machine. Tonight, during the latest round of spring storms, this particular machine chose to shutdown. There was no obvious power surge or outage and the other machines (2 of them) running on the same power source / outlet remained active.

No big deal. It's happened before. Just power it back up and all will be good...NOT!

It appears that windows actively modifies the registry (winsock in this case) while you are on the web. I say appears because I've been so far removed from the inner workings of windows networking for several years now. I used the linux boxes (text-based browsing at it's finest, lynx) to google for the solution to reset the winsock and get back to the web.

Looks like it's time to get that mac I've been thinking about.

As per usual, once we found out that there might be another bundle joining us, we began using the internet(s) to see what might have changed in the last 5 years since we had the last one. Part of that process resulted in reading stories (good and bad) of the experiences of other expecting parents.

One mother-to-be was so ticklish that when her baby moved, she would burst out laughing. Another had a baby who had found the magic sciatic nerve and would choose the most inconvenient time to hit it causing numerous problems for the mom-to-be.

So far, our newest bundle has found that she can tickle momma by hitting the hip bones and cause pain by hitting the pelvic bones. My wife has already begun placing blame for these antics on me as they only seem to happen when I'm around.

I have begun jokingly referring to the tickle as the green wire and pain as the red wire.