Whoooo... busy few months. Here's the scoops.

Gonna have another baby. It's a boy. June 24th.

Lily's awesome, Misty's awesome, and I weigh less than I have in a decade.

Work is going excellently, I'm extremely useful.

I just passed my MCSE 2008 upgrade exam (I know it's 3x MCTP's, I'm still calling it MCSE).

Pops helped me get some computer components so I can build a virtualization platform.

Can you say load balancing, clustering, and Hyper-V?

Schoolfield IT Consulting is picking up more and more customers. Low-intensity, but the extra income really helps a lot.

I think the reason so many people are excited about an Obama presidency is because they think they won't have to be ashamed of their president. That they have a president who will be tactful, intelligent, and nice.  Likeable, but not in the buffoon kind of way. 

I've been ashamed of our leadership for so long I don't know what that feels like. 

I hope he doesn't turn a jekyll-hyde on us.

PhotoFunia

It occurs to me that sometimes, accusations of selfishness can arise from unentertained selfishness.

Well, we moved most of our stuff over to our new apartment in Tigard. It's 2.5 miles from my workplace, so this morning I took my bike to work! It was neat, I went much faster than traffic. The first quarter of the route was downhill, which is lucky I suppose because I have less time in the morning than I do on the way back. My lungs are all burny from the cold air, but I feel a bit invigorated.

Actually now I feel tired. Damn.

This is a page of statistics detailing exactly why a person shouldn't eat meat, dairy, or eggs. It presents many viewpoints, at least one of which is sure to appeal to you.

You know it's not summer anymore when your coconut oil solidifies.

At work today, I got a phonecall from a salesman with some sort of printer supply company. I should have been on my guard their tricks, the first clue should have been that I promptly forgot his and the company's name the second he told them to me. He said that the guy before me, we'll call him "Bob" ('Cos that's his name) ordered 4 printer cartridges from his company before he left. The details were fuzzy, but it seemed as though because he "purchased them" in a larger number (4), he had gotten a significant (40%) price break. He actually only PAID for one at that price at the start, and then another one later, just before he left. It was "end of the cycle" and he was needing to close this account out for "his books" and he suggested that if I didn't purchase the remaining two cartridges (at the discount price) that the price for the first two would retroactively increase and we might be billed the difference.

I asked him for his email address, but he didn't give one to me. I asked him for his callback number, he said it was the main customer service number, and if I called back I might not get him. I said that I wasn't the one to make purchasing decisions. He said he'd call back later.

Now, it wasn't as if the moment he began speaking I wasn't aware that he was trying to get money from me and I wasn't going to give it to him. The only difference was the time I listened to him. I don't know why I listen to them.. I get at least 3 a week. These must be desperate (or rich) individuals. They all seem young, my age. Trying to make it in telephone sales jobs. Trying to meet their quota by any means necessary.

I confirmed later with the office manager that no such agreement had taken place, and if it did they weren't getting any money out of us and if they sent us anything we'd give it to our finance director and he would set them straight. She said they try that all the time, and that they often hang up the phone when asked for a callback number.

There is no chance of me being convinced to buy anything they have to sell me. I can do any service they'd offer me, I know everything they'd try to teach me, and if I didn't know it, I could learn it far more cheaply and easily than any lessons they might provide me.

I'm a poor buyer for these types of products.



Also, I'm learning how to use MySysprep.

I bought a cheapie bicycle headlamp from Fred Meyers, gutted it, and put in the rechargeable NiMH battery from our 900mhz phone. Now, I have a bicycle headlamp with a rechargeable battery, all I have to do is put it back into the phone and put the phone on the charger to charge the battery. It was cheaper than the hand-crank one, and I had the phone I'm not using.


Logic.

Today we went to pick blackberries a few blocks from my house. There's a vacant lot among the houses there, and all along the back edge grows a very large blackberry bush. The berries are now fully ripe, so I cut off a few choice (and mostly ripe) berry-bearing tips, tied them together, and took them to the playground with Lily. When we got there, I tied them to a low-hanging branch of a walnut tree and pronounced it a blackberry tree. The neighborhood kids gathered around and devoured the blackberries. Lily made many friends today.

Then we went home and ate peanut-butter and jelly sandwiches and fruit.

Also, I'm sick and shouldn't have been doing any of this as it's only going to delay my recovery.

Ahh, such is life.

I've found a new trick for waking up in the morning, although in my opinion it comes dangerously close to black magic.

Anyhow, I found some guarana tablets at my local Fred Meyer's (a PNW grocery store chain) and thought, hey! "natural" caffeine! But I could never remember to take them in the morning when people generally drink coffee. So, I put a little bowl next to my alarm clock (along with some other good supplements) with a glass of water. I set my alarm clock for about an hour before I want to be awake, take the guarana and go back to sleep when it goes off. 30-45 minutes later I sit bolt upright, wide awake.

Stimulants FTW.

The only bad part is that caffeine is addictive and can interfere with sleep quality, among other things. That's what I equate with black magic, sacrifice of self for worldly gain. But, at this time the extra power seems like it's necessary.

I found an interesting article describing one reason why it's not particularly healthy to ingest red meat.
Apparently we're allergic to a very common molecule found in animals which we (alone, it seems) have a different version of.

Quoth the article:

Because the animal version of the sugar is so similar to the human one, the latter could be caught in the friendly fire directed by the immune system. Chronic inflammation is also linked with cancer; intriguingly, the team found that Neu5Gc was concentrated in tumours, particularly those that spread throughout the body. This could aid detection of such diseases, by getting scientists to look for the animal acid rather than the tumours themselves.


(link)

I sure hope they don't find a way to fix that immunity issue, that'd be cheating. :p

I think I've found an interesting mental-maintenance technique. Recently I was searching for methods of treating anxiety and I ran across this site. It details a method of "waking suggestion" this guy has been using to treat various mild conditions. Essentially, the suggestion is this: "When I clap my hands and say 'Disconnect!', you will disconnect from (subconscious object)." This is followed by several iterations of clapping one's hands (or hitting a buzzer) and saying the word Disconnect in an authoritative tone.

I personally experimented with this as an autosuggestion and found it to be effective. I haven't had many problems with anxiety until recently, so I was relatively unfamiliar with methods of dealing with it.

The fellow referenced above helpfully provides audio recordings of himself saying these things (for free, I must add), but since I don't have the luxury of headphones I've been repeating these things to myself mentally. He describes a feeling of lightness when the therapy is effective, and this is something I have experienced. In fact, the more I do this the more familiar I am becoming with the sensation of "disconnection", such that I can invoke it wordlessly.

If you have problems with anxiety, I suggest trying this therapy. It is free, simple, and takes only moments.


Speaking in terms of biology/psychology, I can see how this might be effective. The therapy consists of detaching two subconscious objects with successive suggestions. In this case, the two objects are the sensation of anxiety and either the present or a past experience. I would imagine this de-coupling mechanism could be reversed and used to couple two desirable things (perhaps, a fabricated desire and the present experience, if motivation were desired). Also, the simplicity allows for repeated implementation. Perhaps a "boot-strap" system could be devised whereby the desire to auto-suggest at regular intervals could be strengthened, thus creating a more effective behavior. I will experiment.



This could also be described in terms of neural networks and patterns, but I find the meta-language more expressive and useful.

Wow... since I parted ways with my last employer, I've lost about 40lbs. That's almost 5 gallons of fat.

Right now I'm at the tail end (day 8) of yet another master-cleanse, which claimed the last 10lbs. Now my size 38 pants are bunching up and my 36's are a teensy bit big. I guess I'm about 35.5 right now. Which is crappy because I was just given (thanks Mom!) about four pairs of 38 pants (she didn't think getting 36's was a good idea). Shows you!

Well, that is, if I somehow manage to keep it off this time. This is the least I've weighed in about a decade, I can't help but think it's in part related to changes in my diet. I've been eating a lot less bread lately, I think Subway, even with wheat bread, is probably not good for my waistline. Before the cleanse I was eating mostly whole-grain fancy-schmancy bread (Dave's killer bread is GREAT!) on PB&J's, so I think I'll keep it that way.

I think I'll start making burritos for myself to take for lunch.

Also, we're not going to use our microwave anymore due to internet paranoia.

Oh gosh, what's new... let's see....

On the work side of things I've been making a lot of progress. I figured out how to implement Snort and have begun monitoring the network while I'm at work. I admit though that I used a walkthrough from howtoforge, but it was a great learning tool. Of course, that was preceded by me installing Ubuntu on my laptop to obviate the whole "boss won't buy me a windows license" issue. I still need to get him to buy a few for the users.

On the home side, things are looking up. The wife went to her first yoga class last night, although I don't know how it went because me an' the baby were asleep when she got back home, but I'm sure she had fun. We're doing a lot better on our budgeting, especially on food costs. We're eating almost 100% organic and unprocessed food, which is awesome. I'm doing another mastercleanse at the moment (just got done with today's quart of salt-water) and I've lost a lot of weight since the whole Net-Ro-Pole thing (35lbs and counting!).

I've decided that I need to branch out in my system administration, so Linux was an obvious first step. As soon as I can make room I'm going to deploy Ubuntu server on a spare box. I also intend to start learning Python as a way to get back into programming. I think network software is where I'm gonna make some dough, and it's something I can do and still work where I do now.

Hmm... that's all I can think of for now, I'll try to post more.

Ahh, I'm building a new image for deployment on VMWare Server. Thing is neat! I can mount an ISO as a bootable virtual CD-ROM, or a boot floppy! Or an actual drive. I booted it with a ghost boot iso and took an image from the host server. I thought it'd be faster, but it was only 60mb/s. I might get higher speeds from another machine, across the gbit network bus.

I've also been playing with USMT. It seems to have copied my data correctly, we'll see if it can replace it.

Now _I'M_ sick. Blech. My new job is going swimmingly, though. They really needed an admin to clean things up. I found a workstation with RAS on it that apparently had several clients, and nothing was encrypted. NOTHING!

These jokers will be IPSEC'd to the gills when I get done with them!

Portland is growing more and more beautiful as spring progresses. The (extremely numerous) trees are beginning to flower, barefoot hippies are everywhere, and there's a big park 1 block from the house.

Lily is sick with the sniffles right now though, she kept us up all night with her immune-system shenanigans. Poor baby, she was very unhappy.

In actuality, I _do_ have to fight against traffic on the way to and from work.

My new job seems to be working out well. They were so lost, the network configuration was all over the place, backups weren't working, things were insecure.

Well, they're still insecure, but I'm working on it.

Well, I got a job offer. There are some good points and some bad points.

Good:
1. It's a 2.8% raise from my last salary.
2. It's a job, and I need one right now.
3. It's not too far away (20 mins) and I won't fight against traffic.
4. The people seem nice.
5. It's good experience on a resume, to be running a small but complete network.
6. There's a Burgerville a block away.

Bad:
1. I will be the only nerd in the building. No networking team, just me.
2. I'm not being put in charge of the network (officially), even though I'll be the one with the most IT experience. The title is network tech, not network admin.
3. Neither I nor mine will get insurance for 90 days.
4. It's a small environment. Once I get things polished it's maintenance.
5. Limited IT budget means I'll be working the small dollar. No enterprise level thinking required.
6. I think one of the owners flirted with me during the interview.


Ahh... So, I'm thinking that I will take the job and continue to court a particular defense contractor. Not giving me insurance makes me queasy, that was the same situation as the last job. If you're going to pay someone that much, is health insurance THAT much of a deal? At least the baby's paid up.





If someone at the company manages to find this blog (highly unlikely), give me health insurance immediately and I won't bolt at the first opportunity, I promise.

Otherwise, I get a matched (or heck, even a few thou lower) salary from NG, I'm gone.