journaling: enabled

Well, another weekend is gone. I’m not sure why… but I’m looking forward to warmer weather and no snow. I think it’s because I want to do stuff outside and I’m just tired of cold weather. I didn’t do a whole lot today. I did manage to update the photo archive on the dance theatre site … I haven’t linked it up yet though. I want to do some re-arranging … may as well link the video clips from the same page. Makes sense to me anyway. Visitors can see thumbnails and larger pictures from the pieces before viewing the video.
Tomorrow should be interesting at work. We got word over the weekend from the CIO that one of our projects is being postponed so we can put more effort into making another project go more smoothly. This frustrates other efforts unfortunately. I’m curious to see what the networking services staff feel about this.

Today I got up late. I took flutterbyefred out to lunch at Perkins and did some grocery shopping. I also picked up a Papa Murphy’s pizza for dinner. Yummy. I got to have some fun in the Econofoods parking lot in Hudson … did a complete donut. When I got home, I played on the puter some more then took a soak in the tub … I think I got the water too warm because when I got out I felt like I was going to pass out. My back did feel better though. I think I pulled something earlier this week.
I forgot to post last night. I think it was because I was too tired when I got done with chatting with friends. It was a long week at work, though I finally got to working on a big project with Josh (the new hire) on Friday afternoon.
I’m pondering what to do for backup software on my server. I used to use TapeWare … but unfortunately that seems to require versions of libraries that I don’t have installed with Debian Linux 3.0. I wonder if it would be worth setting up a second server for backups. It would be preferable to get my current one working though. I think I will fight with that some more tomorrow. *grumble*

First a bit about my day. I got a fair amount done in spite of meetings this morning. I pretty much finished another laptop setup and resolved some other issues. I finally kicked a copy protection problem in one of the computer labs too. Glad to have that out of the way. Made for a long day though … left about 6:15 or so. Got home and watched Friends and made some hamburgers.
I hopped onto IRC ‘cuz I haven’t been on in several days and a URL in the topic caught my eye. I think it’s something that is worth reading for most anybody. It’s a website dedicated to a 21 yr. old who overdosed on drugs while in a chatroom. The website includes chatroom logs from the “event”. They’re rather graphic but sobering in the end. I guess it raises the fact that just because something is occurring “on the internet” doesn’t mean it’s not real. In this case, there was even a webcam. I’m not sure what I would have done in the shoes of the other people who were in the chatroom, but unfortunately they didn’t have enough information to prevent the death.
I’m glad tomorrow is Friday. I’ve had enough of work this week. My days have been too long. It’s amazing how tired a person can get from working extra hours even if it’s not particularly physical. I hope I can catch up on sleep this weekend.

I had a nice spectrum of emotion today. I was sad about the situation with Liz, QT and I and how it currently is, but I look forward to the future with hope that we can be happy. I had the joy of finally nailing a problem that’s been frustrating me at work … it only took about 5 hrs of scripting. How important can easy-to-use printers in a computer lab be anyway? It’s not like students have to print out assignments in the digital age, now do they? I experienced frustration in a meeting that dragged out longer than needed (what else is new). I had the joy of delivering a new laptop with MacOS X to a user. I had the fear of a vehicular incident when a deer ran out in front of me on my way home … I missed it by about a truck-length … not sure where its friend went, but it didn’t run into me.
My house is cold lately. Not just physically … but it doesn’t feel cozy either. I’m not sure why. That may be contributing to my boredom and tendency to veg when I’m here. I can work on computer projects … notably my goal of getting Cyrus IMAP working with seive scripts (anybody out there with experience building SASL with MySQL authentication?). I should also finish up the photo archive for last year’s Dance Theatre concert. The concert is coming up April 1-5th. One of my coworkers is working on equipping the theatre with subwoofers so we can have some bass this year. I’m a little skeptical of his thoughts on using computer subwoofers for this … but I guess we’ll see.
It’s hard to believe there are only two more days left in the week. I don’t have any plans for the weekend. I don’t plan on cutting wood or visiting my parents. Not sure what I’ll do.

I don’t know what to do lately. Work is stressful. My personal life is stressful. Tonight I stayed late working on a script problem for the computer labs because it helped keep my mind off other issues in my life. I would have stayed later except I felt like I was burning out. I’m feeling frustrated. I felt like hitting things, but what good would that do. I’d probably end up with a sore or broken hand and if I’m lucky a dent in something that I hit. It would have been nice to put that sort of energy to use.
Tonight I just kinda veg’d in front of the tv. I watched a show on the competition for the Joint Strike Fighter between Boeing and Lockheed-Martin. It was quite interesting … but I guess I’m into that sort of thing. I watched my tape of ‘Pumpkin Chunkin’. It’s an annual pumpkin hurling competition held out on the east coast. Some incredible hardware … including air cannons that can hurl pumpkins nearly a mile. Apparently they put extra lime in the soil for growing their pumpkins so they come out white with really hard shells to withstand the forces put on them. I think that would be fun to watch sometime.
My latest Linux project is getting Cyrus IMAP upgraded. I’m currently running version 1.5.9 or something like that … quite old but doing the job. I’d like to upgrade to something that supports seive scripts. This requires that I build a working version of Cyrus SASL … ideally allowing me to authenticate against a MySQL database. Of course, that part is experimental, so it’s hard to find any instructions on doing it.

I like snow. A lot. But I have to confess that I’m not that enthusiastic about shoveling it. It took me an hour to shovel my driveway tonight. Not fun. I think my sinuses drained though. (touch wood). I can hear the wind howling outside. It’s not warm at all. Time to crawl into my toasty warm bed.

Today was a good day. I spent a good chunk of it hanging out with beldurnik and czar_sonja. It was fun to see them again and catch up with them on life. We went camera shopping and I did a bit of shopping for a small TV for my computer room (that I can use as a video editing monitor). I’d like something that’s 9 or 13 inches … ideally with S-video, but that’s not really likely … so hoping for something that even just has stereo audio to go with the composite video. Might have to live with mono though.
After that we ate at Green Mill. I must confess that I don’t really care for garlic a lot. I will certainly eat it, but I don’t like it in quantity. We had a pineapple and garlic deep-dish pizza. I don’t think I’ll be having it again. It wasn’t as bad as the chicken and garlic pizza from Papa Murphy’s… that stuff is seriously strong. I had a fun drive home in the snow. Surprisingly I didn’t see too many people in the ditch, though I saw two that had hit guard rails. I hope we get lots of snow tonight and tomorrow. They’re forecasting possibly as much as 10 inches … which would really rock, though I confess that shovelling it would probably suck. I shovelled my driveway and sidewalk on Friday and I’m still sore … of course cutting wood on Saturday didn’t help that much either. My arms and legs are sore from that.
I hope to actually start making progress on problems at work this week. I kinda stalled out at the end of last week between meetings and showing Joshua (new hire) the ropes of computer lab management.
Off to bed for me now before I fall off my chair … I’m having trouble typing anyway.

Seventeen years ago … January 28th, 1986 to be exact, I was just getting into the lunch line in grade school when I heard that the space shuttle Challenger had blown up. I’m not sure if I really believed it until I got home and got to see the replays over and over again on television. It is an event that has stuck with me throughout the years … I even did my first speech for my college public speaking course on the subject. I wonder if I will remember today’s Columbia explosion the same way. I hope people are thinking about those people today. Adventurers who believe so deeply in science that they risked (and gave) their lives in its pursuit.
The following quote is from Ronald Reagan’s address to the nation that was given when the Challenger disaster occurred. I feel it is worth thinking about again today:
“We will never forget them, nor the last time we saw them, this morning, as they prepared for the journey and waved goodbye and slipped the surly bonds of earth to touch the face of God.”