Battlefield 1942
I bought a new game called Battlefield 1942. It is a WWII simulator that allows you to play Axis or Allies. Drive submarines. Fly planes. Drive tanks. The Jeeps rock, though I would love to through a box of grenades in the back when I let out across the desert. The single player mode of this game lacks a bit, but the main objective is to play with other people. That is where this game comes into its own. I haven't played online yet. I'm still trying to hit something with a bazooka. (Where did the word "bazooka" come from anyway?)
There are all kinds of scenarios. There are island assaults, city street to street fighting, open desert, blaw blaw blaw. You can play a grunt, sniper, or a medic. It is the vehicles that make this game different from say Team Fortress. So far I've had a blast. I have the symptoms of a good video game. Eating late, pain in back, neck and hands, and thinking about the game the rest of the day. I can't wait to get back to it this evening.

Woody's place
I have a buddy named Woody. (I still giggle when I ask "Hey Woody, what's up?") He, with his family, live in the beautiful neighborhood with a golf course running through it and beautiful homes all over the place. A feature of note for the neighborhood are the two gates you have to pass through to get to Woody's house. The homes in this section of the area start around a quarter of a million bucks. There is another section of the neighborhood where the homes are worth over a million. There is another gate to get in that section. I couldn't not live in a home where I had to pass through three gates. The running joke is the people in the million dollar homes don't want that quarter of a million dollar riff-raff in their neighborhood.

ShareReactor
ShareReactor is a web page that has links for Overnet. Overnet is one of the P2P file sharing software packages I've used. It is mainly geared to movies. Anyway, ShareReactor is not a true commercial web page. They sell advertising to make some money, but they don't do so well. I've noticed their page goes down quite a bit. They had pop up adds that drive every one nuts. I remember a note going across the front page that red “If you don't stop complaining about the pop up adds in the forum, I'll BAN you for ever!” Now, they have in-content ads. That means, the server strips the ads in as the page is built before it is sent to the browser. This way no pop up killer or ad replacing software can catch it. I don't care. I've become so jaded I don't even notice the ads anymore. I read right past them without their even registering.

Undead
I'm watching an Australian show called Undead. It doesn't bather with all that “plot” stuff. It is just a simple - aliens invade and turn people into zombies - flick. A fisherman gets attacked by zombie fish in his boat. He has to shoot the fish after they repeatedly jump at his face trying to get him. This movie is possibly the best piece of entertainment ever made.
Why do they keep shooting zombies that just get up again? Shoot them in the head!!! Don't you watch the movies?

Work
I was sitting at work today trying so hard to make something work. It didn't. I tried again and still it laughed at me. Some one else came along with something for me to do. I tried to make it work and it did not. I tried at both until it was time to go home. I stead. I tried at one and only narrowed the problem down. It still does not work. Neither works. The deadline was months ago. These things are making people miss deadlines. I had only moments to think of things that are more important than my labor at the company. I thought about What Saint Peter might ask me when I stand before the gates to be judged. Then I thought of the account some people give of the bright light and many people guiding you to the light just after death. Then I thought about the motivation of the light. Then I thought about those light-up fish at the bottom of the ocean that attract pray with a fake worm and a glow to their doom. Then I thought about the people guiding you to the light and wandered if they just want the light to eat you instead of them. I think about filing out of a portal from the mortal world with many others all being herded to the light by so very helpful beings. Then I think “Jesus I need a girlfriend!”

More Work
I stayed 13 hours today to not much avail. We are in a crunch time. The dam is leaking and I'm plugging holes as fast as I can. Tpro will suffer. I spoke with a close friend I have known for many years. He told me I am an “all or nothing” kind of guy. He is right. I complained recently of not being able to focus. I think the trouble is I focus too hard on one thing. Tpro needs my help more as an investor right now. I will give Tpro my all soon enough.

Jen's Concert
What a concert. Jen stole the show. I bought a CD from one of the other bands. There were ten artists in all. It was a blast. The guys wanted to party on, but I, being the lightweight, had to call it a night early.
We went to a place called the Mucky Duck. It is a nice venue. The place was packed. It was a hot crowd.

Saturday
I have some friends who went to the Renaissance Festival today. It is quite simply beautiful outside. I hope they have the time of their lives. I was invited, but I had some work to do. My role at Tpro is changing.

Network
I have had to change my IP schema on my network . It turns out when you do VPN (Virtual Private Network) you start having network conflicts. I readjusted the web server (the pictures should be up), change the IP on everything. The tough part is SMB (Samba). It has some kind of IP link hidden somewhere. I've ordered some sandwiches. I'll tackle it after I eat something.
. . .
Wow, that was easy. “hosts allow” still had the old IP range in it. She is up and running.

Cars
I heard somewhere that 15% of the American economy runs on or near the automobile. I wish I could track it down online. Europe has a marvelous transit system. It all depends on how much countries invest. Some cities in the US have a good public transit system. Those are not countries. How much do you spend on your car, or cars? I'll bet it is a fair piece of your income. Some of you might pay more for your vehicle than in taxes. Remember to include your insurance, maintenance, tires, tickets, gasoline and Armor-All. Think of the transit system we would have in America if even a sizable slice of that was spent on rail.
I'm bias. I can't drive. I'm sticking to my guns. What we have now sucks. OPEC has us by the short hairs. There are cars that get 50 miles to the gallon. No one wants them. Every one wants a gigantic SUV. I heard a study on the radio that says automobiles have become the faction accessory to replace shoes. People own different cars for different occasions. It makes me ill.

View from Scott's office
We have a nature preserver behind our building. It isn't really a nature preserver, but it is thick with trees. Scott's office looks out from the first floor under the company. In the morning if you turn off the lights it looks like a cave looking over a lake scene. Between that and the candy he keeps on his desk, it almost makes it worth talking to Scott. :-) (kidding Scott)

Days
It is just going to be a challenge every day. I'm not missing anything. I have to remember that. When I'm upset, that is a normal feeling. It is valid. Things piss me off. I should act pissed off. Things are going to make me confused. That is motivation to learn.

New Mobile plan
600 minutes and unlimited nights an weekends with T-mobile
365 days in a year
104 weekend days (52 x 2)
365 - 104 = 261 full week days
261 / 12 = 21.75 weekdays per month
600 / 21.75 = 27.5 minutes per weekday
600 minutes per month sounds like more than that.

First Order of Business
We have a guy up here who comes in every morning and if, as is often the case, he has left his coffee cup somewhere, he hunts it down. The last few weeks he has participated in software testing and had to track someone down who has the key to the lab to get his coffee cup.

SWEET!!!!
Dr. Who is coming back to British TV. It is only a matter of time before it makes it's way to the states. If Overnet has anything to say about it, it will not take long at all. I'm such a Dr. Who fan. I remember staying up late on Saturday night just to take in the crappy special affects (let's jus face it shall we). The acting wasn't always great. I liked the sidekicks too. They were always kind of funky. They never seemed to fit in to society. Like me. I hope it still has that beyond reality feel that it had in the sixties, seventies and eighties. Some of the first Dr. Who episodes were in black and white. The first time I played with a music keyboard and heard all the sounds that it made, I realized where Dr. Who got its sounds. The laser beams and the funky aliens in rubber masks, or hiding under trash cans with flashlights (torches) strapped to their “heads” made the show a classic. I hope they make the new show with some of this in mind.

Tattoo
A friend of mine, who has been on Earth long enough to know what's up, told me “Don't get a tattoo. Every old person I know regret getting theirs'.” The thing is, I don't intend to ever get old (in the Peter Pan sense). I have thought about a tattoo for fifteen years. I have waited this long to choose what I want on my body for the rest of my life. It is easier to get a divorce than get rid of a tattoo. My last marrage lasted about 18 months. We only knew each other for about a year. I've given this one fifteen years of thought. That means I should get twenty five years of satisfaction. That puts me at about sixty. By then, they will have talking video tattoos like on Futurama.

Tattoo
I have figured out what Tattoo I want. I have given my guardian angle quite a bit of grief over the years. I would like to get a weeping angle. Sitting a bit slumped on the floor with her head in her hands and her wings formed a bit around her like a mother bird might surround her chicks. I picture brown straight hair wrapping around her arms as she weeps for me. I'm going to give myself a little while to think about it before I pull the trigger.
Who knows a good artist?

Sympathy Camera
I want to get a new digital camera. It is $500 or so. I don't need it. I've been going through a rough time lately. It is just plane stress. I never learned how to cope with stress. Anyway. The camera is sweet. It has all the features I want. The trouble is, I just don't need it. I'm going to wait.

Wireless Routers
I've bought three wireless routers in the past couple of months. They are from three different manufacturers. They are all four port wire switches with 802.11b wireless access points built in. Here are my results.
Old non-wireless NetGear : This router, “The Iron Horse” as I like to call it, has a metallic case and as performed flawlessly for years. If I didn't need a wireless router, I would not be trying to make something else work.
Wireless NetGear : This router has one of the best interfaces for maintenance. The trouble is, the wireless portion of the router dies after about fifteen minutes of use. No matter what I do I have to recycle the router to make the wireless connecter kick in. I'm currently using this router because I get the best Overnet numbers through it.
Wireless Linksys : This router has a crappy interface for maintenance. It also lost it's memory every twenty four hours and required a complete reprogramming. This is typical of Linksys equipment. They all suck. Now that they are owned by Cisco, I believe Cisco sucks too. if it is smaller than a refrigerator from Cisco, don't trust it. Josh asked to try this router out. I tried to warn him.
Wireless D-Link : This router has a nice interface. Every about thirty seconds the wire side of the router disconnected for about half a second. This makes Overnet run at about three kilobits for download speed. That is very bad. it is like slamming the door shut on the computer's fingers at it is trying to do it's job.
Summary : Wireless routers Suck.

Mr. Deeds
I was watching Mr. Deeds while typing this up. The scene came around where Deeds asks every one what they wanted to be when they grew up. People said Firefighter, veterinarian, and cool stuff like that. I wanted to be self sufficient. I wanted to depend on no one. I wanted to work for a living and support myself without help. I suppose I am exactly what I wanted to be.

Best use of P2P
All the stupid gaming sites have delays on their free downloads unless you pay them for the no delay Bastards. I've found that I look at the file name and size, then fire up Overnet to get the download. It is faster than waiting through the artificial delay. Sometimes the delay is over an hour for the download to start. I understand the need to make money. There is no right to make money in the United States.

Wallpaper
I found a wallpaper for my computer at work. It is just an aquatic plane on a lake or a river with bunches of moss floating around and what might be a moose or a tree stump on the edge. I like aquatic planes for some reason. There was some TV show on a million years ago that had an aquatic plane flying around.

Life is Short
I'm going to give up DND. I need to concentrate on Tpro. The whole game point thing is driving me nuts. Adam, the DM, wants to balance the field somehow and it just isn't going to happen. It isn't fun anymore. They are all a bunch of game-ist engineers. I'm a narrative-ist.I was screwed from the start.

Day Job
Yesterday I was on my way home from the day job with all these aspirations of getting some code done. I got home and was dead asleep in 15 minutes. I woke up at 1:00 AM and have been up ever since. I'm groggy.

Tat
I need a tattoo. What of though? I've considered Marvin the Martian, "God - Family - Freedom", a dragon, a cross, a gnome, a fox (my spiritual animal), and others. What is best? A friend of mine has a nice centipede on her arm. She has a chaos symbol, but I can't say I like it as much. Most guys get tats on their chest or arm. Some women like ink on their lower back. I'm sticking to my upper arm. I saw a Cops episode that had a nasty chick with an ivy all over her body. It was disgusting.

Lunch
A buddy and I are heading over to Whole foods for lunch. There is this guy who makes the sandwiches there. I haven't learned his name, but he is a big fellow and makes big sandwiches. When he is on sandwich duty, we don't need to get a bag of chips.

Written 2003-09-10
I keep catching the company I work for asking software venders to patch old versions of software. This is like taking a 72 Mustang to Ford and asking them to add airbags. Buy a new car.
They also demand that complex programs be written I Visual Basic because the managers can read the code to figure out what is going on. That way they can lay you off in the middle of a project. I've wanted to ask a million times "If you walked into a mechanic's and said 'Fix my car, but don't use any socket wrenches.' do you know what look would be on the mechanic's face? ... This one right here."
Managers only understand hours and dollars. They are not aloud creativity or reason. I just got back from lunch. All we did the whole time was dump on management. This company is in trouble. Then again, all big corporations have similar problems I'm sure.

Written 2003-09-11
It is September eleventh again. The news noted there were less people at this years anniversary. I keep hearing phrases like “We will never forget” and the like. I just don't believe it. We Americans hold nothing sacred. It is raining outside. I remember 9/11/2001 was clear and sunny. I remember leaving work early because I wasn't sure how the buses would run in the afternoon. So much has happened in two years. I've fallen in and out of love again. I've started a business with friends.

Family
My cousin wrote a book called Blood the Masquerade, The Story of Ryan. I'm on chapter seven of thirty four. They are short chapters. That must be a trend lately in printing to make up for out ever shorter attention spans. Her book is about vampires. She has some medical background that shoes in the book. So far, so good.

Work
I'm at work sitting in a darkened mini-computer lab tapping away at this entry between tasks. I feel a bit less alone typing a message to the masses. There is a window in here and the sun is on it's way up. The window looks out on the parking lot. I can watch people scamper about on their way into the building. Someone just came in the lab and asked a question. My solitude is broken. No big deal. It had to happen sooner or later.
The tint on the window is more clear at the top. There is an overhang protecting the upper window from direct sunlight. This building is twenty years old. How long is window tint supposed to last?
I looked at my earth. It says nine eleven. A slight chill runes up my spine. Its been two years. My watch is analog.

I look tired
One of the guys up here who's wife and he just had a baby said I look tired. He asked what was keeping me up and I had to say "two jobs". I feel tired. I've been a grump lately. Nothing a week in a Caribbean brothel wouldn't fix. (I'm kidding Mom) It doesn't help that I'm in the midle of a dificult project for Tellro an my day job. I can handle the Tpro stuff, it is the corporate crap that gets tp me. More ovet, it is the personalities that get to me. When someone asks me who my bos is here, I answer "everybody". It is getting old feeling like the only indian sorounded by chiefs.

<Fiction>
This is story told by one who knows the history of the Borg, and his here to relive it.
While encounters with the Borg are still rare, the time line we have chosen for ourselves runs mirky from lost lost memories. The Borg are a problem that might have ended mankind in a few generations. That was not to be. We had to fight for our existence. We will have to make a decision that will end all of a living thing, everywhere. For all the creatures that have come and gone the Borg nearly survived for the lack of conviction.
The Borg didn't start as we know them. The Borg are a consequence of peace.
When an intelligent being wants to control that which is too simple to out-smart, too small to squash, that being wants to control disease, cure cancer, mend bones, repair tissue, enforce laws ... the last is the Achilles' heel.
When we finally defeated the Borg, wiped them out, we learned much from them. The most useful contraption acquired in our trial are nanobots. They do all the things listed here and many times more. There were creatures, I'll call them people, from a time before mankind who desired to eliminate disease and make themselves live lives free of injury and pain. Some say they wanted immortality. The Borg nearly obtained it. To this end they wrought upon the fabric of life, nanobots. A name a child might call a new toy. Striking terror at first for the fear of joining the Borg, then becoming part of our existence the nanobots will simply chose a new host, us, from which to extend their legacy.
It takes a short while, after the Borg leave our sight, that we want the life without pain or fear of injury. We find some mistake made by those people so long ago. They tried to use the source of their salvation to control those in their own world who did not fit in, criminals. The nanobots, used for communication in the military and civilian life had to be changed to control criminals. The nanobots had to be made to dominate the host. There had to be a central point that dominated the criminals. This collective mind would allow one voice to overcome the individual. The trouble is, one lone designer of this new system failed foresee the disastrous results of testing on himself. The very instant the nanobots in his own blood realized a new, a superior way, a new religion among the machines, they told other nanobots. The path was simple. Tied to everything, inside everyone, in an instant the seed of the Borg was sewn.
</Fiction>

What do you think?

Movie
I'm watching Reservoir Dogs. This show is all about choices. It is a cliché that our lives are just one long line of choices. They make up who we are. They determine whether we go to heaven or hell. They decide how much money we make. The whole bit. I could make a choice of finishing my program or watching a movie I've seen fifteen times. Well, guess which I'm doing.
Work was nuts. I had to call in a vendor to fix their own software. It turns out they had updated a database for some guy named Mike at our our company. We ended up identifying the trouble and I put up a quick fix for the weekend. I'll double check everything Monday. That was a choice. I made it and now come the consequences.
Last night I came home and collapsed. By the time I got home, I was so wiped out that I couldn't see straight. (even less so than normal.) I was in la-la land by 6:30. That was a choice.
These two choices along with a bunch of others mean that I haven't completed the backup program that I started more than two weeks ago. I'm out of excuses. I chose to make it work this weekend or else. Or else, I'll call in sick Monday and do it. It is so difficult to come home and get work done. I don't know how the other guys do it. They have families and other responsibilities to attend too.
OK, I started working on the program.

Psudocode 101
Psudocode is a list written logically that kind of looks like code. It won't run in any fashion. It might look like the following.
####
Check for this (15 lines of code)
If this is good then (5 lines of code)
Do this (50 lines of code)
Else
Do something else (10 lines of code)
End IF
Get user information (25 lines of code)
Verify user's information (100 lines of code)
Write user information to the database (10 lines of code)
####
I have 350 lines of code so far. There isn't a bunch left. I have the psudocode from Tom. It is a great help. Tom wrote a section that helps scan a log file. That hundred or so lines of code including comments which translates into three lines in the psudocode. That's how psudocode works. There are two hundred lines in the psudocode. I mentioned before that I'm having trouble following some one else's vision of the program. I'm coming to terms with it.

Maryann was the only one on the island I wanted to rescue.

Labor Day
The holiday has been pretty fun. We ended up at a buddy's place eating barbecue and ice-cream with strawberries. We are going over Sixteen Candles. We are debating what kind of geek Ted is. Long Duck dong just came on. I remember watching this movie years ago. Molly looks more like my daughter might now. These people used to look like peers.

Middle East
I worry about what happens in the Middle East. Just narrowing it down to Israel and the Palestinians is difficult. They are all interwoven. For centuries the people from all around the area have had tribal customs. Only in the last couple of centuries have nations been the norm. Now Israel have declared war on Hamas. It is just the latest step in a long chain of events. I believe one tribe has a dispute with another tribe. Then they make friends with a third tribe. The two tribes gang up on the other tribe and so on. Now, thousands of years later, people are taught to hate each other and no one has known why for several generations. They make up reasons. The Middle East is no different in this respect than say Ireland or Africa nations. Peace will never come until the people stop teaching their children to hate, not just “those guys”, but any one. People refer to this as the cycle of hate.
Are there ever legitimate reasons to fight? Of course there are. When the Nazis invaded Poland, that was a good reason to go to war. When Communism took hold in Vietnam, that was a bad reason to go to war. The USA was fighting an idea. If only we had known that people get sick of Communism after a couple of generations, things would have been much better. There is really no telling.
I wish there were some one who had the pull to stop it all. Everywhere. God doesn't seem to want it to end, else it would. People used to escape this cycle by moving to some frontier. That is why people came to America. The land of the free. The classless society. That isn't entirely true. There are no new frontiers. There is nowhere for people to run too. There is nowhere to hide. Now, one must fight for freedom. I know Europeans took America from the indigenous population. The American Indians didn't believe a person could own land. All land belongs to Mother Nature. Thus they sold Manhattan island for a handful of beads.

Rambling Monday Evening
Lets start a bit earlier When I got into work this morning, I found a pile waiting for me. I already knew most of it was going to be there. It is vacation season at my day job. It seems like I know what I'm doing at work. If people didn't think I were knowledgeable, they would not keep coming back to ask for more. There is a saying “The only reward for hard work is more work.” I believe it. I hope Tpro takes off soon. If not, I'm going to have to ask for a rase. Not because I need one to cover my bills ... Because I'm worth it.
Now it is late into the evening The sun has long gone down. The August evening is hot and humid. No one is outside. Have children ever played in the street here? My neighbor is home playing a video game. The only sound outside is the rumble of car stereos as they pass. This complex is going down hill. I should move. I hate moving. I know people who move every six months. That sounds like a mess in motion. That is far to much excitement for me. I like my excitement boring. I just wish I had some one to share all this monotony with. I've gone over thaat one already.

Shizilate this site
You have got to try this site out. It does miracles for my blog. OK, it appears to be down at the moment. It is worth the wait.

Geek Moments
I am ...
Typing this on my laptop.
Typing this on my role up keyboard (that I'm not quite used to yet).
Watching Tom and Jerry on the second monitor hooked up to my laptop.
Watching Tom an Jerry from AVI files on my Linux file server.
Burning a DVD with my other Windows box, the one without a monitor.
Using VNC to control the computer that is burning the DVD.
Listening to Tom and Jerry on my stereo hooked to my laptop.
Watching the Half Life 2 demo video on the laptop screen while Tom and Jerry play on the other.

Is any one impressed out there?

Saturday Evening
Jen Rathuurn is playing this evening. I wish I could make the show. I've been a poor fan. It would be better if I were out among friends this evening. I feel much more alive today than the last couple of weeks. I think a concert among friends would have been just the ticket (so to speak). I'm trying to get some coding done. It isn't going very quickly. It never does. I have Futurama playing in the background. I will miss that show.

Crappie Hardware
Sylvia gave me one of those flexible indestructible keyboards. The trouble is, every fifth or sixth keystroke is doubled. In other words, I have to backup on most every word and delete some keystroke that got doubled by mistake. It isn't the speed I'm typing. I've tried fast and slow. They both cause the same trouble. This is enough to make the keyboard useless. My typing is bad enough without the keyboard doubling every fifth key in the process. I wander if I'm hitting multiple keys at the same time. It is dreadfully slow. Nothing works. Crap. The driver for the pad thing that comes on the laptop seems to override the mouse driver. This means I can't get the mouse to adjust to left handed use.
First the wireless router I bought doesn't work. It quits after a few minutes. Now the keyboard I intended to use for the laptop turns out to be a dud. The mouse won't work left handed. I think I should stay away from new hardware for a while. Did I loose a bet with God? I hope my code is less buggy than the hardware.

Migraine
This is about an hour after the above was typed. I figured out the keyboard. I normally type pretty fast and bounce my fingers as I type. This method doesn't work with the rubber keyboard. I have to mash each key specifically and make sure not to bounce.
Anyway, I figured out why I've been such a crab lately. I have a migraine. I've noticed the pattern before. I'm a grump for about a week and then I'm a happy guy for a day. Then, I have a migraine. It starts with a squiggle in my field of vision. It isn't a blurry spot, it is a place where the brightness is messed up. When the squiggle is on the left, the right side of my head hurts. When the squiggle is on the right, the left side of my head hurts. I can take the pain. It is the nausea that stops me in my tracks. I've taken a hand full of aspirin and Tylenol so I should be OK. The squiggle is almost gone now. That is a good sign.

Sorry it has been so long since my last entry. I have been very angry lately. It is all due to stress. I am at a place I've been looking at for a long time. I'm working on a real future and it scares me to death. I have a task from Tpro. The task is to write a script to schedule and run a backup on an NT server. It isn't all that complicated. I find myself trying to make it complicated. I have to keep backing up and looking at the simple flowchart that Tom gave me. I'm ashamed at how slow I'm going. It is the same thing that made school hard for me. It is the same thing that makes DND hard for me. I'm so afraid of failure that I trip myself on the way to success. If you succeed you are expected to succeed again. That is hard to keep up. I want to succeed I want to fail. I want to be free to give it my best and find out what happens.
My Grandfather was an avid carpenter. He build rooms on houses, basement and all. He took out walls in the house. He always left one thing undone. I said it was to feel needed. I think maybe it was because if you are not finished, you have not failed. I never asked my grandfather.
My Father was looking for a purpose. He volunteered for the draft int the sixties during Vietnam. You can ask the to call your name in the draft apparently. It is different than joining. He went to Korea and was a supply guy like Clingier in MASH. He was in charge of four million dollars worth of dump-trucks for a day. He said he felt funny signing for them. Anyway. I wander myself it having a legally blind son made him find his way. He seems to have his eye on the ball more than his father.
My Uncle on my Father's side (my father's only brother) was an Air Force man. He was in procurement as far as I can tell. He has driven a limousine and worked for some other companies since the Air Force. I only know now that he wants to sail.
I lack drive. Arnold Schwarzenegger was asked what the one most important thing that contributed to his success was and he answered “drive”. I believe it. Id-Kelly is a lousy programmer.

Pictures
Well, there are some troubles with the pictures. They don't all look clear, and one of them is turned 90 degrees. I'll get around to fixing them. Meanwhile I'll put some more on The next set of pictures will be of friends. I hope none of them get upset.

Between the eyes
I have a zit right between my eyes. My eyebrows come together in the middle a little bit. I have gray/blond eyebrows so it is hard to tell. It cracks me up how often I hit the zit. It turns out I take off my glasses and rub my forehead when I need a minute to think. That is probably where the zit came from in the first place.

Don't ask
This hillbilly lives in the woods. One day a city slicker comes by and asks "Where the action is in these parts?"
The hillbilly says "Well, there's a party tonight and you are invited."
The city slicker says "I'm there, what kind of party is it?"
The hillbilly says "Well, there is going to be some drinking, fighting, cussing, and sex. Can you handle that?"
"Sure, Who all's coming?" answers the city slicker.
"Well" says the hillbilly, "There's you, and there's me."

France heat
3000 people have been killed in France by the heat wave this month. The temperatures are in the nineties and low hundreds. No one over there seems to have air conditioning. I live in Houston. That is a typical August day here. Only we add ninety percent humidity to boot. If I were dropped in the forest of Canada even in the middle of August, I bet I would freeze to death the first night. I don't know how to cope. A report from Iraq said the temperature there is 125 Fahrenheit, more in spots. Now that is a desert temperature. That must be why the French hire solders from other areas for the Foreign Legion to fight in the deserts.

Meeting
We had a meeting this afternoon for Tpro. Things are looking up. I have a challenging task to perform. It involves doing some things I know and doing some things I must learn. It is the whole reason I got into the Tpro scene. It is late and I need to pay bills. I need to do quite a few things. I hope I find the strength.

PICTURES!!!!!

Please let me know if you have trouble getting these to work

Lesson of proportion
I have a aunt who's two year old got a little toy barn one Christmas. The poor tike cried because she couldn't go in her barn. She sat there with her feet in the open doors and cried staring at the barn. I felt terrible. I witnessed the suffering of reality upon the learning brain of a child. It was fascinating.

Nuremburg 2050
Big corporations do funny things. Enron got in all kinds of trouble because they applied their records retention too late. They destroyed documents after an investigation began. Had Enron just followed their own records retention policies on a daily basis there would have been far less evidence for the DOJ to sift through. When in Excel or Word at my day job, when you hit save a screen pops up for records retention. Some one asked me if that screen can be killed. "Yes, but then I would have to purge your memory." I answer.
I thought about the method I would use to disable the automatic pop up that asks about records retention if I needed to do so. The list of places I would look for the hooks that pull up that screen popped into my head. I thought about who put in those commands. Nowhere in the system keeps that information. A vision of a court room full of people in wigs on one side and robots on the other side pops into my head.
A wigged one asks "Why did you incinerate that orphanage?"
The robot answers in a very calm calculated voice "I was following orders."
The judge asks "Who gave you those orders?"
The robot with little emotion says "That information was never entered."

Work and friends
It is Friday afternoon at my day job. I'm sitting here wanting so much to leave. The walls are closing in. I have some friends who want to go eat this evening. I can't wait. Something so simple as a night jawing with friends sounds like paradise. I'm quite blessed in the friend department. (you know who you are). I've only really hurt one friend in the past few years. I wish I could fix my relationship with Dawn. She was and still is a good friend. If anything happened to one of us the other would still come to aid. I miss her terribly. It is the normal man vs woman stuff that drive a wedge between us. We hardly ever email any more. There was a time I wanted to marry her. I have no idea what she ever thought of me.
I'm turning up the music and trying to look busy. I've had some problems making things work here this week. A bunch of users have had problems getting things to work that worked fine a couple of weeks ago. The new workstations we are getting are all laptops. Something like 40,000 will be purchased over the next year or so. I"m responsible for setting up software to install from the network so users don't have to make decisions during install, or find the CDs. It is almost as boring as my other job. I support a VMS database software for the tracking of material and specifications for chemical plants. Just typing it makes my eyes role back in my head.

Weekend
Friday I got off from work and headed over to Josh's place to put together a computer network for a client. The computers had already been unpacked and plugged up. We sat there for hours making setting changes and tweaking things to work best for this client. We really need to figure out how to shorten that part of the work. It would have been impossible with a larger implementation. Hopefully we will get the work process honed enough to shorten the work.
We configured the server for ACT, and people's file shares. The tape backup is still not configured. Tom wants individual scripts to run the tape system and I'm starting to think the tape software is the way to go. We will figure something out. We changed the login stuff. We set up VNC on a bunch of the systems. Friday night was very interesting.
Saturday we went onsite. We setup the new computers and ran a network wire for a printer. We moved all the legacy computers into “server” room and got them ready for Monday. Some of our guys will be out there ready to answer user's questions and finish up the configuration.
All in all, this has been fun so far. I'm learning new things all the time.

Some things I've learned this weekend
My opinion of VNC gets better every time I use it.
The most reliable Microsoft feature is Windows 95 sucked the day it came out and still does today.
Windows NT 3.51 has no taskbar. It is amazing how much Windows depends on the Taskbar. (that is two thing)
The network wizards in Windows XP make it harder to setup internet connections than Windows 2000.
Windows XP has hidden control panels. At the command prompt type “control userpasswords2 <enter>”.
The $500 firewall isn't ten times better than the $40 one.
A 2 year old is far more willing to help set up a computer than a 35 year old.
You can fit 6 computers with 6 flat panel monitors and all the crap you need for an install in the back of a BMW and a Nissan Pathfinder.
Letherman tools are a necessary addition to the human body (I knew this already, but the lesson keeps reinforcing itself)