Long, Long Time

Hey, it's me. Yes, I'm still alive, though sleep has been a luxury that I've been missing out on, but that's not why you're reading this. You're reading to see if I'm ever going to post again. Well, here it is! :)

Seriously, I think my life is a bit boring, but I decided to please (maybe) you with it anyway, because it's been TOO LONG!!! :) The last couple of months have not been the most pleasant from an employer point of view. I've been putting in too many hours, working too hard, for too little pay, and too little appreciation. That being said, I'm still employed and plan to stay that way. :)

So, I'm still alive and still in pretty good health, though I'm not getting enough sleep. Such is life, eh? :)

On a good-ish note, The Queen was finally diagnosed (after 20 years or so) with mild asthma attacks. For the last couple of decades, she's had Bronchitis 2-4 times a year and it turns out that the majority of that was probably NOT Bronchitis. Instead, it was asthma attacks! Head on over to her blog and read about it.

I'll post more later. Right now, I'm going to try to get as much sleep tonight as I can.

This post was brought to you by the letters P, A, Y, R, A, I, S, E, and the number 20%. :)

Equipment's here! Anyone have time to put it in place?

The equipment I mentioned in my previous post has arrived. Unfortunately, I haven't had very much time to work on getting it in place. I need my boss to allow me to take the company offline for a day so I can relocate the equipment to the rack where it'll be more safe in case of environmental issues (the collapse of the $30 folding Wal-mart table that $16-$20 K of hardware sits on that happens to house the company's entire business. At least I'll be able to mount every server as well as all the tele-com equipment in the rack once I get the chance to really work on it. The next few days to weeks will be really busy.

This post was brought to you by the letters S, L, E, E, P, and the number 0.

Work Sux!

As you can probably tell from the title, I'm not particularly enamored with my place of employment right now. Basically, as a result of the greed of the owner, all requests for equipment that will give a modicum of disaster aversion over the last year have been denied. As a result, we suffered that catastrophic failure that all Sys Admins hate. The production database server's hard drive failed and this last week has been hell! I've had 2 16+ hour days, most other days were 10+ hours and I went in yesterday as well. The week before, we hit the wall in terms of storage space (we need more hard drive space!) and had to babysit several business critical tasks until 2am several nights. Since hitting the storage space wall, I've been staying up until 1am at least each night in order to babysit the servers remotely.

My immediate supervisor told me to order the equipment I need and that he'd take the heat. :) Nice-ish guy, but it was too late to avoid the galactic headache associated with the owner's actions (that should probably be LACK of actions) that caused the issue in the first place. To top it off, I'm salaried so there will be no real compensation for the last week and a half of pain.

Anyone need a Senior Systems Administrator? I'll consider relocating for the right package. :) I'll have to clear this with the Queen of course, but I'll consider it.

This post was brought to you by the letters N, A, S, and the number 16.

2 Weeks

It's hard to believe it's been 2 weeks since I last posted. The dates don't lie about it though. :) No changes as yet.

Why is it that I can't ever get on track the way I want? It's as if the universe has decided that no matter what, I'm always going to be just a bit short of my goal.

On a happier note, a different group of friends has decided to form a guild on a different WoW server and have asked me to join. I'm running an undead warlock on the Horde side. I'm interested to see some of the play from the other side. We'll see what happens, I might stick with it for a while.

This post was brought to you by the letters G, I, W, Y, and the number 45.

Possible change...

Hi all,
Sorry to have been so long since my last post, but I'm considering a change. I'm not going to go into details, because this post will turn into a rant if I do. It's work-related, so don't worry yourself too much about it. It may take a while before I work it out and get back into regular posting.

This post was brought to you by the letters U, N, D, E, R, P, A, I, D, and the number 1.3.

Violation!

Yesterday was P-Day! Yes, I got to go into the doctor's office, get bare, and get poked and prodded until the doctor declared me fit to live. After that not-so-pleasant experience, I'm told that my cholesterol and blood pressures are both better than they were 1 month ago. :) That's encouraging, right?

Anyway, I went to work after that and there was a bunch of drama with a member of the sales team getting absolutely fed up with their supervisor and quitting on the spot. I can't say that I blame her as her supervisor is an unmitigated ass, but it's not my department.

That evening, the Pink Princess had baseball clinic and first practice on her new season of coach-pitch baseball. That went pretty well though I'm going to need to work with her a bit on throwing, catching and batting. :) She has enthusiasm, so that makes up for a lot, but I think she can be one of the better players on the team is I work with her a bit.

That night, our stupid neighbors decided to play basketball until after 1am so I called the cops on them. I guess their cop-radar was on and they stopped just after I put the phone down. Then the Purple Dragon had a couple of nightmares and I had to deal with that.

Suffice it to say that I was draggin' when I arrived at work this morning. :)

This post was brought to you by the letters T, I, R, E, D, and the number 1.

You Leeches Suck!

I suppose they all have to start somewhere, but I apparently had an apprentice leech this morning. I'm not sure if giving them a pound of flesh could have hurt any more that this morning's experience.

Not getting enough blood flow? Just wiggle the needle a bit - push it in, pull it out, eventually you'll get the end to where it needs to be so the essence of me can come pouring out.

Perhaps it's part of their voodoo ritual that requires inflicting pain on the target of the spell. I don't know and I don't care as long as I don't get the same lab tech next time.

Amateur...

This post was brought to you by the letters, O, U, C, H, and the number 675.

Leeches...

I'm scheduled for a physical at the doctor's office next week. In order to do that, they want me to show up at the doctor's office about a week early so they can slurp out some blood. That means no food or drink from midnight tonight until they have their pound of my flesh tomorrow.

I plan to be there when they open the doors so I can minimize the damage to my system. :)

The Leeches! How dare they use some of my essence to perform their foul alchemy! I shall hire a wizard of my own to counter their fell intentions! Or not... :)

Anyway, this post was brought to you by the letters S, D, K, and the number 21398.

Relax...

I've been ordered instructed by my doctor to figure out a way to relax on a regular basis. Well, not quite as plainly as that. She said that my blood pressure is a bit high and that they need to see 3 high readings in a row before they are inclined to take steps since she's new to me and all. I have another appointment next month to see those blood-sucking leeches nice folks at the family doctor's office. I'm hoping the queen will be willing to assist me with those relaxation techniques. Perhaps I can convince her that having chicken multiple times a week is a suggestion prescription from our doctor! :) That would be nice...

Wish me luck!

This post was brought to you by the letters I, S, K, and the number 5.

Long Weekend

It's been a long weekend already and the 3rd day hasn't even started. :) I've been doing things around the house and attempting to rest and enjoy the holiday a bit. The vegetable garden is in and doing well so far - though we received 2 more tomato plants this evening and I plan to add them to the garden tomorrow evening.

I plan to do some painting tomorrow and will paint the accent wall of the master bedroom as well as the walls of the upstairs hallway. This is after I've made breakfast for the family since I slacked a bit this morning. :)

Anyway, this will be a short post as I want to do some prep for tomorrow's painting task. Thos post has been brought to you by H, D, L, and the number 6.

Of Doctors and things...

I have been remiss in my duty of informing you all of what's going on here in our little kingdom. You all have my apologies for that. The truth is that there's nothing much to tell other than I've gotten our garden very nearly complete and my sore throat is interesting in it's ability to avoid diagnosis. :)

The garden was finally tilled thanks to a nice neighbor that allowed us to borrow their tiller. I have planted our strawberries, pumpkins, tomatoes, bell peppers, corn, peas, onions, and carrots. I'll be planting the cucumbers and zucchini after work tomorrow. :) After tomorrow, it's just a matter of keeping the garden weeded and watered. We'll have some veggies in just under 2 months.

As for the sore throat, I noticed a very mild case of sore throat when I woke up in the mornings early last week. It was so insignificant, that upon getting out of bed I completely forgot about it. On Thursday about mid-morning, it suddenly became a jagged knife stabbing me in the front of my throat whenever I swallowed anything. It was so bad that I decided to go to the doctor so I could get it diagnosed. It hurt so much that I didn't eat lunch and instead went to the doc in the middle of the afternoon. If you know anything about me, then you know that I rarely go to the doctor, and that it had to be pretty painful to send me running to a doctor. Do you know what the doctor said? Of course, you don't - you weren't there! :) But I've already given you enough information already in this post that you'll guess the message if not the exact delivery. They can't find anything wrong and all the tests they ran came back negative. She told me to take OTC meds for the pain and sent me on my way.

I've been dealing with the stabbing pains since then and they have actually eased a bit since then. Hopefully, it really is nothing, though I'd like to see them find something so there's an explanation for it at least. I know the vampires certainly took enough blood to study - or maybe it was to make mixed drinks. Sheesh!

Anyway, that's all for this post. I'll do better with posting. :)

This post was brought to you by the letters A, G, H, and the number 7.

Oops!

Apparently, I'm more at fault that I gave myself credit for the issues last Friday. To all parties involved, you have my apologies...

This post was brought to you by the letters O, O, P, S, and the number 3.

Happy Birthday...

Warning! This post is a downer. Unless you want to be abruptly and unceremoniously ripped down from your life high, move right along.

You have been warned...

So I officially turned "One Year Older than Dirt" a few days ago. Better than the alternative, I suppose. Anyway, I knew there was a reason I HATED birthdays and this birthday helped to solidify that feeling. The Queen became livid pissed at me for helping pick up a room after I got home from taking the Princess to baseball practice. Then, she screams at me to inform me that dinner's ready. It wasn't a pleasant experience. The net result is that she's yelling/screaming at me shortly before her family is supposed to come over and wish me Happy Birthday. I put on my "Hey, how's everybody doing?" mask and pretend nothing ever happened. I'm guessing that I did/didn't do/say something that pushed her over the edge. I can only guess because we haven't spoken much since then. I don't know why she became so angry, but I was the target, and that doesn't feel so good nor does it seem very fair to me. That's part of marriage, right?

I think I'd appreciate it if there is no celebration for any of my future birthdays. Don't get me wrong. I appreciate the fact that people WANT to celebrate, but it seems that my birthday celebrations always tend to devolve into something I don't want to remember.

My apologies to all of you for posting something that is bound to bring you all down. Next year, I'll treat my birthday as what it is - just another day.

I did get some nice presents, but I still don't feel particularly good about the event.

This post was brought to you by the letters R, A, T, E, D, and the number 4 (out of 10).

I'd like to thank...

Everyone who voted for me. :) I've been nominated for Hottest Daddy Blogger by OTJ! You have my deepest thanks. I don't really hold out hope of winning the thing (primarily because I don't think my blog is quite popular enough), but I oh, so appreciate the thought. :) Also, it looks like I have 4 whole votes (that may have changed by now) and I know that 3 of them are from the Queen, OTJ, and me. At least I'm NOT on the last page. Thanks to everyone who has voted for me so far. :)

--Start shameless plug--
Please vote for me!
--End shameless plug--

The Princess has had her first baseball game a couple days ago. Of course, there was no score kept, there were no outs recorded and everyone got a chance to run the bases. She had a boatload of fun - that's really all that matters, right - and I'll be purchasing a glove for her soon so I can assisting her here in the back yard with her fielding, catching, throwing. :)

Anyway, this post was brought to you by the letters V, O, T, E, and the number 4.

What's up with that?

GEEK ALERT!!! SCIFI SPOILER ALERT!!!

There, now that I've scared all you normal folks away... :) What do you think of the final season 3 episode of Battlestar Galactica. How can so many people in high positions be Cylons? The big question is how was it done? Were they human at some point? Did the actual human get kidnapped and replaced? How did they do it?!?! :)

If you haven't figured it out by now, I love that show!!! The reason I've waited so long to post this is to keep from spoiling anyone's enjoyment of the program. 5 never-before known cylon models all placed in key positions in the Human fleet. Colonel Ty, Chief Tyrol, Lt. Thrace, Thrace's husband, and the president's chief of staff.

Finally...

Phew! The giant project at work is finally over! Everything's been done and deployed so now there are just a few minor issues to mop up. I should have time to post more entries and comments for a while. :)

The weather is finally beginning to act like spring. Warm days and mild nights. It's caused the grass to grow green and a few flowers to peek out at us. It's caused me to start working on an area to put in a garden as well as look into other projects that need to be completed.

It also means that it's finally warm enough in the basement to spend a bit of time down there without sprouting icicles on my nose. :) Look forward to hearing about more of my WoW exploits as well as how geeky I am.

Let's hope my friend, M, is good for D&D this week. He took last week off to spend time with his wife. Kinda silly to cancel a session for that, right? :) Kidding!

Anway, it's good to have the pressure valve opened a bit at work so there's not quite so much managerial stressing gonig on at work. :)

This post was brought to you by the letters, G, R, E, E, N, and the number 12.

Of Parties, and Gardens, and Things...

Whew! The party's over... The princess had her public birthday party on Friday (public = people other than family). We had a house full of 15 (you read that right- 15) 6- and 7-year old girls. Some of them behaved absolutely horribly. We had to deal with all the drama that ensues when a bunch of females get together (yes, you read that right - it sounds horrible, but I haven't witnessed a large crowd of females without drama and until I do, I'll make that statement as if it's 100% factual).

Anyway, the party sucked far too much of the life out of the both of us. I wouldn't have a problem if we didn't have to suffer through any more of these parties - especially if there is a gaggle of girls.

I have been working on putting in a vegetable garden. OK, I've been digging in the dirt so that we'll have a place to plant the vegetable garden. I've have just under half of the space tilled and will be working on it for the rest of the week - if I don't get snowed out Tuesday afternoon.

The Queen and I just had our 9th wedding anniversary.

Work is very busy this week so I'll probably be somewhat scarce in new entries.

This post was brought to you by the letters G, I, R, L, S, and the number 15.

Makes me wish...

Days like today make me wish I worked outdoors again. :) The weather was gorgeous! It was just about 70° with very little breeze and I would be ecstatic if it were like this year-round! Of course we need to have a bit of rain on occasion, but I can live with that. The princess and the dragon are outside enjoying the swing set and I just came in from uncovering the deck furniture. If it stays warm enough, perhaps we'll eat on the deck. Of course, that depends on what the weather does in the next 30 minutes or so. :)

The Queen is off getting the finishing touches for dinner. So far, it's been a pretty good day. :)

This post was brought to you by the letters N, I, C, E, and the number 70.

High Pressure

I'm sure you've all had enough of my complaining about work and the asinine ideas the owner has about what's most important to keep his business afloat. The business is based on a service provided to clients through a web site and via email. The entire business relies on the servers. This mental giant refuses to pay for physical protection for the equipment nor will he pay for proper electrical protection for his equipment. His servers are sitting on a folding table!!! There's no redundancy and the core machines are out of resources. How long does this intellectual colossus think his business can continue to function on the ragged edge? I'm also under pressure to get our developer (a new employee mind you) to deliver a significant code change before becoming familiar with our software source code. Oh, by the way, we only have the 1 developer since it costs money to have 2 at the same time. Go figure...

Anyone out there in the Salt Lake area looking for a senior level windows systems administrator? I'm only half kidding. If the pay and benefits are right, I'll consider it. :)

OK, enough of the stupidity. If you don't read OTJ yet, you should. She has managed to figure out exactly why some of us blog. If you're wondering why blogging seems so important to some of us, then give her a read. Be warned, that she is very popular and you'll probably see a ton of comments to each of her postings. They're pretty entertaining posts and she loves to play with photoshop. Enjoy!

It's been a while since I posted as it would have only been complaints about work. Please accept my apologies for slacking on you all. :) I'll try to post more often.

This post was brought to you by the letters M, T, O, E, and the number 9.

The Quest is Complete!

I was just on a quest to procure dinner. I was triumphant! KFC came through for us! :) We had chicken, well a 12 piece chicken dinner w/ potatoes, cole slaw, and biscuits. Sorry, nothing any more exciting than that, dear readers. :)

The quest was not without perils, however. It seems that Utah is chock full of horrible drivers. I'm positive, though not 100% sure, the every state in the union requires a driver to use the signals when turning and changing lanes. They also require people to take steps to avoid accidents. Steps such as looking for oncoming traffic and NOT pulling out in front of it. I'm quite happy that I don't trust any other driver on the road when I'm out and so I drive extremely defensively. I try to ALWAYS be aware of what other vehicles are around me and where my escape routes are. Who knows what could have happened if it weren't for my mistrust.

Incidentally, The Queen and I took the princess and the dragon sledding today. We enjoyed ourselves immensely. :)

This post was brought to you by the letters Y, W, G, E, and the number 7.