journaling: enabled

I haven’t posted in a while but I wanted to comment on two items before I do a post about where life has taken me the past month and a half …

First off, a status I saw on Facebook the other day that says a lot about my thoughts on the objections to gay marriage… “Larry King is getting his 8th divorce, Liz Taylor is possibly getting married for the 9th time, Jesse James and Tiger Woods are screwing EVERYTHING, yet the idea for same-sex marriage is going to destroy the institution of marriage? REALLY!? copy and paste if you agree.”

Totally ignoring what you may or may not read in the Bible regarding gay marriage, I think the above says a lot about how many Americans seem to view marriage, whether they will admit it or not.  It seems that it is no longer the commitment that it once was.  It’s something to be discarded when it doesn’t suit you anymore.  The rules apply if you agree with them.  American culture is doing far more damage to marriage than same-sex marriage could ever do.  Tabloids sensationalize and fabricate marriage scandals every week.  Why?  People apparently find it interesting.  It’s not interesting.  It’s sad.  I’m not a celebrity by any stretch of the imagination, but I do think their marriages should be held to the same standards we should be holding ours to.  We don’t hear about celebrity couples celebrating major anniversaries.  Why is that?  America needs better marriage role models.  Kevin Bacon has been married 21 years.  Arnold Schwarzenegger has been married 24.  We don’t hear about the marriages that are lasting … we hear about the ones that are breaking up.  America … gay marriage is one of the least of our problems.  And allowing it certainly will not lead to men marrying goats or sheep, even in the West.

My second topic for the evening.  History class.  Interesting link below, but I’ll elaborate first.  Basically many Americans are forgetting how to think for themselves and accepting what sounds good to them without question.  Do Americans really stop and think about what politicians are feeding them? Do Americans research how our current situation compares to our past?  The vast majority of us are sheep.  We don’t take the time to fact check.  We want instant gratification and will vote for the person we think is most likely to provide it, regardless of whether it’s possible.  Politicians are wolves.  Both sides.

Link: The Tea Party Challenge

Another briefer but somewhat related topic.  There was a whole lot of objection from the right about President Obama making America less safe by entering into agreements about when nuclear arms would be used.  One of the reasons I voted for the man was his gentler approach to foreign policy.  Imagine what we could accomplish if we stopped focusing on what’s happening outside our borders and applied some resources within.  Or, imagine if we applied resources to solving non-military problems.  I am sick of the U.S. being the world’s police force, particularly given that it’s not a position others want us in.  How many of our foreign relations problems (including with terrorists) are a result of us sticking our nose where it really doesn’t belong?  That’s not to say there aren’t places where it’s a good idea to apply pressure, but how about winning people’s hearts rather than bombing them back into the stone age.  This is only going to get worse.  Certain resources are finite.  The obvious one is oil.  China and India are the two most populous nations on the planet and they want some.  If you think that one’s contentious, how about fresh water?  The current  and past water debates in the western U.S. will look like mild discussions compared to what may come.

Okay … I’ll get down off my podium now.  It’s time to get some shuteye.  Hopefully more posts on life soon.

Tonight began the two weeks of craziness that is Dance Theatre rehearsals and performances.  First couple nights we set lights.  Then we have some run-throughs.  After spring break, some dress rehearsals and performances.  My boss is awesome and letting me use some vacation time to ensure I get enough rest during all of this so and don’t get exhausted.  Liz is working box office mid-day and being super woman having the kids with her.  I wish I could help out in the evenings when they’re wiped out and being handful but there isn’t much I can do from 20 miles away.  :(  This also means I don’t get to see much of them either.  :`(

Work was pretty full of meetings today.  It’s hard to get things done and yet still stay involved where needed.  Lots of learning opportunities in the projects we’re working on though, so that’s a good thing.  I like challenges.  I do wish I was able to get more deeply involved in some aspects of these projects but there is a limit to how much I can do.

This past Friday Liz and I got out on a date … but unfortunately it turned into quite a bummer because I was feeling lousy after dinner and wasn’t up for a movie.  :(  I think the move idea will need to be re-visited after Dance Theatre is done.  I’d really like to figure out a way to have a quiet evening watching a movie at home, but I’m not sure how to do that.  Maybe we don’t do an evening but an afternoon instead … might be easier to do naps somewhere else than mess with bedtimes.

My apologies in advance if the first paragraph is too technically geeky for some….

Don’t you hate it when a single purchase decision forces a number of other decisions down a path that you don’t want to go?  I’ve determined that the processor I bought to resuscitate a “dumpster computer” has driven me down a path that is less flexible than I had hoped.  Originally I had bought the processor to use with the the original motherboard … then I figured out that Intel had handicapped the motherboard so the processor I bought wouldn’t work.  Time to buy new motherboard.  New motherboard required new memory.  The system is up and running, but I’ve discovered I can’t virtualize quite as nicely as I had wanted to.  Namely, I can’t run unmodified OSes without a performance hit. More research will need to be done to determine how much of a problem, if any that will be.  In retrospect, I wish I had just started from scratch or at least known that the first motherboard was handicapped.

In some ways, this past month has been a blur.  I haven’t been feeling 100% for most of it, particularly since the Super Bowl.  Days have pretty much fallen into the routine of get up, get ready and go to work.  Work usually involves at least 2 meetings each day, though Fridays and Wednesdays may vary.  Come home and provide Liz relief from the kids until they’re in bed.  Most of the time we can get dinner squeezed in there somehow.  After that we clean up, maybe watch TV, maybe discuss some issue and then head to bed.  Warren has been waking up once or twice a night.  Laura has been waking up once in a while now too since she appears to have some molars coming in.  This means 2-3 interruptions in sleep each night.  Thankfully last night Liz was able to stay up with Warren when he decided he didn’t want to go back to bed after his 11 o’clock feeding.

Don’t have much more to say … Liz is out with her girls for her monthly day out.  She had a scrapbooking day last Sunday.  I’m taking Wednesday off work so I get that day mostly to myself, but have church stuff to do that evening.  I am also hoping to get a friend to go to the Science Museum with me before OmniFest ends, but that doesn’t seem to be working out at this point either.  :(  So frustrating.

… I don’t do enough of it.  Projects languish.  To-do list languishes.  Stress builds up.  Kids have something to do with it, namely not having large blocks of time to do things, but I think another part of it is not being ready to jump on time when it becomes available.  I need to make a to-do list that’s handy and remember to visit it.

Work is still somewhat busy.  Wrapped up some things recently and hope to wrap up a few more this week.  Had some unscheduled outages yesterday morning.  The outages themselves didn’t bother me too much but it was rather rough after being shorted on sleep due to a certain little boy.

Finding time to work on church tasks has been a big challenge.  I want to get started on ordering equipment so we can finally get our show on the wire so to speak.  Thankfully something positive has come out of the delay … the price of the camera we’re getting has dropped about $200.  Yay!  I need to chat with our audio guy and figure out who’s ordering what from where.  I can hunt down deals online but there was talk of going back to the vendor he got the equipment ideas from.  We won’t be able to order everything he wants because budget doesn’t allow it.

We finally broke down and replaced the snowblower this past week.  The old one that I had gotten for free quit in the middle of a blowing session a few snowfalls ago and I haven’t been able to restart it.  It wasn’t really up to the task some days anyway.  The new one has no such problems and doesn’t require a work-out to get it started.  Plug it in … push start … I can handle that and so can Liz.  I gave it a bit of a workout on some drifts last week and am hoping we get at least one more major storm so I can see how it works for the upper part of the driveway.

In other news, I bought a processor on eBay for a computer that was junked from work.  Unfortunately, it still doesn’t work.  I’m not certain which part is the problem, but the fact that the eBay seller didn’t ship the processor in an anti-static bag makes me suspect that it is the culprit.  Not happy about it but I don’t have any way to verify which piece of the puzzle is broken and I can’t afford parts to test on.  At this point I’m sucking it up as wasted $$. 

Anyway … hopefully this week I’ll get some “me” time scheduled and figure out how to fit in time to work on church projects (video, website).

I can’t believe it took me until January 13th to do my first journal post of the new year, but here it is.  Life has been pretty busy lately.  Work has mostly consisted of combination of the following:

• experimenting with and/or configuring Commonspot
• planning/training for Active Directory / Forefront Identity Manager (FIM) implementation
• PowerShell experimentation for FIM
• scripting for upgrade of mailman
• scripting for/testing/configuring for upgrade from ancient Twiki to Foswiki
• testing/working on moving FootPrints from Linux servers to Windows servers

There are probably other incidental items.  At lunch time, I’ve been hunting digital furry woodland creatures with a good friend.  After work, home to the family to rescue Liz’s sanity (I’m not always successful, which is why she escapes with friends).

This year we’re making another attempt at improving finance management by using mint.com.  There is some more work to do with it but I think it will work better than the php finance solution I had tried last year.  It supports automatic retrieval of transaction info from our bank and has an iPhone/iPod Touch app!  There is also of course the efforts to improve our physical fitness.  I’d love to go running again but I’m disinclined to try it right now when I’d fall on my rear unless I wear ice cleats (which probably aren’t any fun to run in).

Upcoming post topics … church, geek stuff, Christmas …  Final thought … if you could remove one problem from the world (e.g. AIDS, hunger/thirst, etc.) … what would it be?

Well, another Christmas vacation is gone.  That’s not to say we’re done with Christmas, mind you, since it does last a bit longer in church and there’s the matter of other parts of the family to visit.  This coming weekend will be a trip to Iowa.  Warren isn’t himself today so hopefully he’s not coming down with something.  Traveling with sick baby = bad idea.  Two weeks later we’re heading down to DeForest for Christmas at the in-laws. Santa was pretty good to me this year.  I got some mini candy bars, a light for my hat brim and a KTIS CD among other items.  Family got me some shirts, a set of ornaments, a DVD and a photography book.

This week should be pretty quiet at work.  I have some work to do to prepare for some changes we’re making next week and I have a conference call with some people to talk about getting some assistance with a software migration I’ve been having difficulty with.  There are a lot of people on vacation so I ought to be able to get a lot done.  Thursday I’m hoping to be able to hang out with a friend or two for a while and catch up, since we haven’t seen each other in several months.

Laura and Warren did really well with Santa today in Hudson.  There wasn’t much wait and Laura sat with him happily … quite an accomplishment for a 2-1/2 yr old I think.  She did get upset when it was time to leave though.  Good to know she likes the guy in the big red suit.

Laura and Warren w/Santa

Tomorrow is church of course.  We really should be better at attending regularly than we are.  I think that’s a good goal for the new year.

I think this week went fast.  Not really sure … it was a bit of a blur and chaos.  Work has been crazy busy with juggling things.  I’m still involved in 2 major projects, though they haven’t demanded much of my time this week.  I’ve been occupied with my 3 smaller projects trying to get 1 or 2 knocked off while battling software problems on a 4th, unrelated, email system.  I suspect the vendor screwed something up with a software update and isn’t owning up to the problem.  Unfortunately it means I get to deal with the effects of that and try to keep things running for our customers.

Wednesday was rather nuts.  It started off with the chaos of dealing with the fact that somebody in Madison took it upon himself to declare all the UW campuses closed due to weather.  Not all of them listened mind you, but we did.  Oh… did I mention he did this about an hour before classes were due to start?  On the last full week of classes before finals?  Without regard to whether we really *needed* to close?  Yeah … pissed a lot of people off.  Communication breakdowns on our end meant some people showed up anyway and some people got 5 to 8 notifications that we were closed.  Lovely.  Follow that up with the discovery that some enterprising spammer had been using our website to relay spam for the previous 5 days and an incident with the aforementioned email system.  Oh… and I was supposed to be a pallbearer in my great aunt’s funeral that day too.  I didn’t go due to the weather.  Our dance theatre preview night was also canceled/postponed due to weather.

Yesterday Warren had his 4-month well-baby appointment.  He’s doing very well … a healthy 17-pound baby boy.  He got pokes so he was of course unhappy about that, but he still handles them much better than Laura did at his age.  She got a poke for H1N1, as did Liz.  No pokes for me, since I got my H1N1 last week.  Still need to schedule my seasonal though.  Yesterday afternoon was devoted to one of the small work projects and we made great progress on that.  Today I spent most of my day working on a different project and fighting little flareups with the problem child email server as well as file services issues.  Overall wasn’t a horrid day but I’m glad it’s done.

This weekend we’ll hopefully get the kids to see the man in the big red suit.  I’m kinda curious how Laura is going to react, since she’s mentioned Santa a few times in the past few weeks and seemed enthusiastic about him.  Warren I’m sure won’t care too much.   I think we’re going to try and call it an early night and maybe get more sleep tonight than the past two.

Do you remember it?  That’s from the Smurfs!  I’ve had a smurfy day I think.  Of course, it could also have been a smurfy day, I’m not honestly sure which.  My skin isn’t blue after all.  I’m thankful for that, because my wife’s skin isn’t blue either (though she is wearing a smurfy-blue t-shirt).  Some of the lights on our Christmas tree are though.  We got our tree cut, hauled home and put up over the weekend.  Decorations went up last night … and some of those are blue too!  Wow.  That’s a lot of blue.

Work has been going reasonably well.  I had a lovely total of 5 meetings today.  Ick.  I currently have 4 scheduled for tomorrow.  None on Wednesday, but that’s because I’m going to a funeral.  :(  My great aunt went home to the Lord last week after battling health issues for years, most recently cancer.  Wednesday night I have a Dance Theatre preview to go to so I have an idea what sort of craziness I’m in store for come March.  Thursday .. more meetings, though I will be going with on a Dr. appointment for Warren and Laura in the morning as well and I’m currently thinking I may skip a meeting Thursday afternoon.  Friday, I might actually get some work done too!

Last Friday Liz and I actually had a night out!  We went to see Bryan Adams at the State Theatre for “a very special acoustic performance.”  It was excellent.  He was hilarious.  The audience was great… many women professing their love for him.  He likes them that way apparently … his women … “drunk and horny”.  Many laughs were had.  Really wouldn’t mind seeing him again, ideally with his band (not that his guitar playing was anything to scoff at).

I really need to get into my Christmas shopping.  I haven’t done any to speak of (any at all?) yet.  Funny how that happens.  I know I’m a guy, but it’s not because I’m procrastinating…. life is getting in the way at times.

Well, apparently the cat has decided that a portable computer is not the appropriate lap warmer and I need to pay attention to her instead.  ttfn.

Just a few of the things I’m thankful for … in no particular order …

• two happy, healthy children
• a job I love
• an awesome boss
• a roof over my head
• plenty of good food for our table
• a warm, comfortable bed to sleep in at night
• in-laws that aren’t crazy (unless you call liking me crazy)
• a pastor who is down-to-earth, approachable, human and inspiring
• people like my brother-in-law who put themselves in harm’s way for we can live with the freedoms we value so much
• a wonderful, beautiful wife who loves me and doesn’t drive me crazy
• parents who taught me the value of hard work, a good education and instilled me with common sense
• coworkers who value my opinions and skills and aren’t afraid to share their own
• friends who are supportive and pleasant
• online tools that have enabled me to make new friends, get in touch with old ones and stay in touch with all
• the gorgeous sunsets visible out my windows at home
• the freedom and resources to pursue my hobbies
• my health
• that my wife would rather bake cookies all day than brave the craziness that is black Friday retail

I’m sure there are many more things that I’m thankful for, but it’s been a long day.  :)  Time to go keep my wife company and fall asleep to the sounds that our small son makes while he’s sleeping.