urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:tomneville Tom's Journal Tom Neville 2008-07-12T09:24:23Z urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:tomneville:62036 2008-07-12T09:22:36Z 2008-07-12T09:24:23Z Hum.. where was I?&nbsp; Recording's been a little tough lately, last week was really busy.&nbsp; I've done what I was brought over here to do.. we've turned up our first customer.&nbsp; YAY!&nbsp; It went better than any other lunch I've ever done.. :)&nbsp; The servers never went over about 10% load.. the SQL server (our main concern.. ) never went over about 2-3% load.&nbsp; We were only shoving out about 1/2 a meg or so during peak.. all is looking VERY good.<br /><br />Oh.. yeah.. go to www.jessops.com and click on "Camera Selector".&nbsp; That's us.&nbsp; :)<br /><br />Now, on to the more important things.&nbsp; :)&nbsp;&nbsp; Most of last week was work, but at 5:00p pretty much everybody is done.&nbsp; (There seems to be a very definate line between work time and non-work time.)<br /><br />I don't remember there being anything last week that is worthy of writing about.. it was all work, then going out to dinner.. then sleeping and doing it all over again.<br /><br />I guess the one thing of note.. we got our Internet on Wednesday of this week.&nbsp; So, hopefully.. it should be easer for me to post and talk with everybody on-line.&nbsp; (I'll be getting home about the time you guys get up. :)<br /><br />One thing that did happen at work.. I finally got hired.&nbsp; :)&nbsp; Josh, Terry and I sat down and talked about it.&nbsp; He's going to send me a formal offer letter in the next few days, and I've already informally accepted the offer.<br /><br />How could I forget about this stuff.. Terry and I now own Dana Soft - a Czech SRO that does software development.&nbsp; (Met with the lawyers the day before yesterday to finish that up.)&nbsp; I also opened up a Czech Account.. (get it.. a bank acount.. :)&nbsp; And.. we talked with the VISA lady.. (Visa as in travel documents.. :)&nbsp; When I get back, I'll have to apply for a long term Visa so I can stay in the country (and the rest of Europe!) for up to a year - at which time it can be renewed.<br /><br />Last night, Terry and I did the tourist thing around town.&nbsp; (I've not taken hardly any pictures here yet and I'm leaving tomorrwow - Sunday - for Berlin and the US.&nbsp; (Then I'll come back here in about 3 weeks after that.)<br /><br />They Gallery has been updated.. look in "Places".&nbsp; (Can't really call it a vacation as I have been and shall be working.. :)&nbsp; I've also put up pictures of the glorious apple pie.&nbsp; :)&nbsp; (Probably stop by McDonald's once more before we leave.&nbsp; That'll only make 3 meals at McDonald's while I was over here.&nbsp; Thankfully, it's not in walking distance.&nbsp; :)&nbsp; <a href="http://www.sneaky.net/gallery2">http://www.sneaky.net/gallery2</a><br /><br />We went over to the programmers apartment last night for dinner again.&nbsp; VERY tasty.&nbsp; Mark is a good cook.&nbsp; After that, we just sat around and talked.<br /><br />Now, it's time to shower.. go get the car.. then drive around the area for a while.&nbsp; Tomorrow, it's a lazy drive up to Berlin.. we'll stay the night and I'll take off Monday morning urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:tomneville:61799 2008-07-07T20:50:19Z 2008-07-07T20:50:19Z It's been a a while since I've updated.&nbsp; Not having Internet at the apartment sucks.&nbsp; It should be installed this tuesday between 2:30p-4:00p.&nbsp; Should be about 4megs a second.. we'll see.&nbsp; (I've heard there's only a few small conections into the city of Podebrady.&nbsp; Part of the problem we're having at the office too.)<br /><br />Hum.. what's been happening.&nbsp; Last week, it was mostly working and going out to dinner after work.&nbsp; There seems to be a very definate line between work and non-work here.&nbsp; Evening and weekends seem to be no-work zones.&nbsp; (Both for p-star and others.)&nbsp; Some of the stores stay open a little later, but if you want something.. you'd better get it during lunch.&nbsp; :)<br /><br />About the only thing that doesn't follow that schedule is resturants and bars.&nbsp; They tend to stay open later..<br /><br />Haven't had too much problem with the language thing.&nbsp; I'm picking up a few Czech phrases here and there.&nbsp; I can get around (and get dinner.. :) but that's about it so far.&nbsp; We start Czech language lessions on Monday.&nbsp; Since I'm going back to the states on the 14th, I'll miss the next 3-4 of them though.&nbsp; :(&nbsp; Maybe I'll have them include me via Skype or something?<br /><br />One issue I did have with language (and about the only real negative one..) was when I went to buy some salami for lunch the other day.&nbsp; I got the bread, cheese and all that with no problems.&nbsp; It was a bit daunting to walk up to the deli counter.. the woman didn't speak any english and seemed kinda iritated that I didn't speak Czech.&nbsp; After a few minutes.. I picked out what I wanted, we figured out that I wanted 100 grams and that was that.<br /><br />Since then, I've actually found it easier to deal with the lanuage thing.&nbsp; I've gone to several other stores, and gotten things without speaking the language.&nbsp; (We've had a few language problems with ordering food..&nbsp; some good.. some bad.. )&nbsp; Over all.. it's much less of an issue than I expected.<br /><br />Things at the office are going well.&nbsp; I've got the p-star colo in Atlanta up and going.&nbsp; All the VMWare servers are up and happy.&nbsp; We've built and deployed the first customer.&nbsp; (YAY!)&nbsp; Getting along with the guys there good.&nbsp; We're spinning up an Asterisk box for phone support (Now that we have customers.. we need to support them.&nbsp; :)<br /><br />Talked VERY briefly with Josh about my "deal".. we'll talk more later in the week.&nbsp; (Leaving to return to the states after next week.)&nbsp; At this point, I don't see any reason (other than being away from family..) for not staying.<br /><br />The weather last week was amazing.&nbsp; (I'm&nbsp; much more aware of the weather when you don't have air conditioning.. :)&nbsp; The temps were for the most part in the 75-80 range or so.&nbsp; I've pretty much gotten used to it.&nbsp; I get hot and sweaty when I walk or move around alot..&nbsp; but if I'm just sitting around or working on the computer - I'm not really uncomfortable.<br /><br />What was weird.. the other night it was down in the 70-72 range.&nbsp; (I used to keep the house at 68 degrees year round..) I was on the verge of being cold.&nbsp; That was weird.<br /><br />Hum.. Saturday.. Terry and I borrowed Zora's car.&nbsp; (We were too late to get to Ikea on the bus before they closed..)&nbsp; Long story short, the driving thing was mostly a non-event.&nbsp; It's fsck'ing expensvie to drive over here.&nbsp; We filled her car.. and ended up putting over $100 for a small tank.&nbsp; (There's a picture up in my gallery - hopefully..&nbsp; I'll remember to link it.&nbsp; :)&nbsp; Diesel was 35 crowns per liter (15 crowns per USD right now.)&nbsp; Terry wants to buy a car over here.. I'm fine with that.. will be fun to go around.&nbsp; (Oh.. found a new store in Nymburg that will work better with a car..)&nbsp; Looks like I can drive on my passport and IN drivers license for 90 days.&nbsp; After that, I need to have an International Drivers License.&nbsp; (I'll get that from AAA when I get back to the states.. so I'll be ready on the next trip.)<br /><br />We got dressers and a bunch of other stuff.&nbsp; Couldn't find a non-fitted sheet for my bed.&nbsp; Not sure WTF is up with that one?&nbsp; We loaded the car up and headed back here to the apartment.&nbsp; (That car was FULL.. :) When we unloaded, we returned the car and decided to walk around for a while.<br /><br />Back to that in a few minutes.&nbsp; First though.. we stopped by McDonald's on the drive back.&nbsp; I was disappointed that I didn't get my Apple pie.&nbsp; OMG.. that was amazing.. truely amazing.&nbsp; The Royal was just like the old Quarter pounders.. the fries.. wow - tasted like they should - fried in lard!&nbsp; And to top it off.. the glorious apple pie.&nbsp; (See my gallery if I forget to link them in..)&nbsp; The pie was fried like they used to do.. wow, I miss the old McDonald's.<br /><br />After we put things away, we walked around for a while longer here in town.&nbsp; We ended up at Septime for dessert.&nbsp; We talked for a few minutes with Michael (the manager..) about how things were going and all that.&nbsp; We originally wanted chocolate ice cream (very good there.. BTW) and had another language based mixup on the order.&nbsp; What we ended up with was better than the chocolate ice cream.&nbsp; They brought out a VERY rich vanillia ice cream topped with strawberries, pineapple and whipped cream.&nbsp; Wow.. I dont' usually like fruit/berry type desserts, but this one was good.. very good.<br /><br />A little while later (Did I mention that I'm learning how to relax over here? and just sit around the resturant withtout trying to figure out what's next.. or where we're going..?) the manager brought out two glasses of port.&nbsp; Again, I'm not much for alcahol or very sweet wines either.. but this one was good.&nbsp; It was almost like drinking grape jelly.. but it wasn't too much.&nbsp; Very tasty.&nbsp; I did mention to Terry on the walk back that if he'd have known us a little better.. he could have just brought out two little (yes..&nbsp; they all are in resturants..) bottles of cokes and gotten the same bang for the buck.&nbsp; :)<br /><br />This was also the night that as we left Josh and Zora's to walk back to the aparmtent, I looked up and in between the trees saw a shooting star.<br /><br />We were walking around the other night.. I was bad, very bad.&nbsp; We went to the train station to look around.&nbsp; There are buildings here that get every day use.. like the train station, that seem like they would be condemned in the states.&nbsp; At the very least, they would change out light bulbs.. The Podebrady train station has one huge room (you can get tickets and they have benches and all that.)&nbsp; We looked around for a few minutes, and I noticed that it echoed really really well.&nbsp; I said something to Terry about farting.. and ended up doing that myself.&nbsp; Well.. it did echo, and the couple of people that were there did give us looks.&nbsp; Terry said he thought they thought we were drunk or something?One thing I did notice about the train station was that there's a mezzinine around the top with stairs.&nbsp; Reminded me of Rome with the armed guards (probably millitary) that were int he same positions in the Rome airport when we left last time.&nbsp; Only this one had a more omnious feeling about it?<br /><br />Today (Sunday..) we hadn't really planed on doing much of anything.&nbsp; We were going to head out for lunch, but Josh called and wanted to get some software at the office.&nbsp; We stopped for lunch at a cafe (Illy I think?)&nbsp; I had a chicken breast salad with rice.&nbsp; Very tasty.&nbsp; And some weird African Iced tea.&nbsp; The taste was different and much more complex than the iced tea that I'm used to.. but it wasn't bad.<br />After lunch, we headed over to Josh's and played some racing games then it was off to Nymburg for shopping and dinner.&nbsp; We stopped by Hyper mart or something like that.. and got some things.&nbsp; That's the store I want to go to from now on.&nbsp; Only problem is that it's about 5-10 minute drive.&nbsp; (Although, you can get there by bike following the river.. but neither of us have bikes right now.)&nbsp; Oh, and on the drive down we followed a motorocycle.&nbsp; He was crazy.. Josh was keeping up with him (Josh is a good fast driver.. as opposed to a fast good driver.. :)&nbsp; I think the bike was contiually trying to one-up us.. and finally did.&nbsp; He popped a couple of wheelies which we couldn't do.<br /><br />From there, it was off to dinner.&nbsp; The first resturant was closed.&nbsp; Apparently, that's not all that uncommon in Czech.. (closed for the day, not permantently..)&nbsp; So, we ended up at an Albanian resturant.&nbsp; I wasn't too sure, but went along with it.&nbsp; They had taken the albanian food off the menu.. but Zora talked them into cooking it for us.&nbsp; (They both know the cook..)&nbsp; The cook sent out 4 dishes..&nbsp; and we all shared them.&nbsp; (Much better way of trying things out.. BTW.)&nbsp; I had some chicken thing.. on top of fries with a mustard based sauce.. VERY tasty.&nbsp; There was some stuffed pepper thing that I wasn't all that impressed with.. liked the bread with that one though.&nbsp; Then there was a chicken in a creamy red sauce that was pretty good.. and lastly there was gyro meat and stuff in a pile in the middle of the plate.&nbsp; That was also very tasty.&nbsp; To wash it all down with, I started with a $2 .2l (6 oz..) coke.&nbsp; Finished it off with a mixture of apple juice and soda water.&nbsp; I've never been able to drink soda water, it reminds me too much of alka-seltzer.&nbsp; However, I was able to tolerate the carbonated water in this drink to night - in fact.. it was good.&nbsp; I'll probably order it again some time.&nbsp; (Would be MUCH cheaper than ording cokes all the time.<br /><br />One of the topics of disucssion during dinner tonight was my eating habits and how they've been completely blown out of the water on this trip.&nbsp; I've tried things on this trip that I would NEVER have considered before.&nbsp; I've found that I like most of them too.. I had planned for this trip to forget about all the hang ups I've got about what I like to eat - because I'm going to be here for a while.. "might as well get used to it" kind of thing.&nbsp; But, it's not really been like that.. I've found that most of the things that I didn't like (or think I'd like..) are not so bad.<br /><br />Some of the things I've tried since coming over here..<br /><br />Chicken breast salad with corn, cucumbers, tomatos, and a bunch of other stuff.. with a light dill (I think?) dressing.&nbsp; Very good..<br /><br />Noodley - the groups name for the chineese place around the corner.&nbsp; (Tasty, but too many onions.)<br /><br />Apple Soda.. (apple juice and soda water.)<br /><br />All of the albainain food tonight.. wouldn't have expected that one.<br /><br />Um.. I know there's more, I just don't remember them all right now.<br /><br />We ate dinner at the "Park Cafe" the other night.&nbsp; Terry had some chicken in cream sauce thing.. and I had baked lasagna.&nbsp; That was tasty.&nbsp; We were both worn out.. I think that was friday night and we were just done with work for the week and all.&nbsp; First time we'd been there.&nbsp; (Found out they do breakfast too.. will have to go there some time.)<br /><br />Oh.. we had dinner at Septime the other night (yeah, we eat there alot..)&nbsp; It was a group of us.. it had been threating to rain all day, and finally let loose.&nbsp; (We had to move from the outside to under the balcony..)&nbsp; It was a good rain, no thunder and lighting..&nbsp; just alot of rain.&nbsp; It was obvious that we weren't going anywhere any time soon.<br /><br />Terry and I have talked about buying a house over here.. it makes sense if we're going to be here for a while.&nbsp; I got to thinking about it, and I'd probably keep it even after the whole p-star thing.&nbsp; It would make a good vacation house.&nbsp; I don't know why or what's different about this place or this time??&nbsp; But it seems I can relax here..<br /><br />Ok.. enough for now.. it's 3:10am here and I've gotta work later in the morning.&nbsp; (I did a bad thing and fell asleep earler, so I've already napped.) urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:tomneville:61686 2008-06-30T16:51:40Z 2008-06-30T16:51:40Z Saturday and Sunday.. Terry and I decided to go get beds on Saturday.&nbsp; For the most part, it was fun.&nbsp; We had lunch at Septime before leaving, as always it was good.&nbsp; Paul and Petra helped us find the right bus to Cerny Most and the IKEA store.&nbsp; The bus dropped us off at a subway/bus station in Cerny Most.&nbsp; From there we took the IKEA bus (they have a bus that goes from the main subway station to the store.)<br /><br />We looked around the store and made it to beds (it's got a path that goes thru the store.)&nbsp;&nbsp; We spent a couple of hours there decding on beds.&nbsp; Luckily they had one woman there that did speak a little english.&nbsp; :)&nbsp; After talking with her, looking many things up on google translator.. and converting and adding we found a couple of beds.&nbsp; The whole group (dresser, bedside table, slats and mattress) was about 22k.&nbsp; We thought about getting smaller beds, but decided against it.&nbsp; (They use two single mattresses instead of one large one.&nbsp; This makes the bigger bed almost twice as expensive.)<br /><br />We had wanted to get two mattresses back to the apartment and were going to have the rest of the beds delivered.&nbsp; (We had made arrangements with Paul and Petra to pick us up after we had shopped.)&nbsp; Terry and I were picturing tying the mattresses to the roof of the car and all kinds of other nightmares.&nbsp; This wasn't the case though.. we found that they sell mattresses (at least the foam ones that we bought..) rolled up.&nbsp; So we had two 90cm rolls that easily fit in the back of Zora's car.&nbsp; I was impressed.&nbsp; We also looked and the rest of the furnature should fit when we go back to do the final order for the bed.<br /><br />After all that (but before we left,) we walked thru the rest of the store.&nbsp; We got sheets, plates, glasses.. all the other stuff.&nbsp; All of it fit in the car for the drive back.<br /><br />We met Zora there at Ikea then the 5 of us fit into a little car and drove back to Podebrady.&nbsp; We stopped on the way at Septime's for dinner.&nbsp; I had a VERY good cesar salad (with bacon and chicken.. YUM!)&nbsp; We talked for a while then walked back to the house.<br /><br />When we got here, I crashed.&nbsp; I was tired.<br /><br />Sunday when I got up, I showered then headed off for the market.&nbsp; I went back up to Alberts (instead of the corner grocery store.. they've got more and probably cheaper..)&nbsp; I got dish washing liquid and some other cleaning stuff.. (moving is going to suck - BTW.)&nbsp; I got one of my favorite "european" breakfasts - baguet bread, siwss cheese and ham.&nbsp; (and 3 cokes.. which were the most expensive things I bought.. :)<br /><br />As I was walking thru the store puttin things in the basket, I had to think how much I was spending.&nbsp; (I only have 500 crowns with me and wasn't too sure about the whole credit card thing.)&nbsp; How do you explain the whole "I don't have enough money.." when you don't speak the language.&nbsp; When I got done, I used my back pack (brought just for this purpous..) to carry every thing back to the apartment.<br /><br />On the way back, I decided to walk down the Kolanad - they had a orchestra playing and a couple of peole singing.&nbsp; Since I was close to the Bancomat, I stopped to get some money.<br /><br />When I got back to the apartment, I washed all the stuff we bought yesterday and put it all away.&nbsp; I laid down and took a short nap, now I'm trying to decide what to do.&nbsp; I'll probably head over to the office and jump on the Internet for a few.. then it'll be time to consider dinner.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br />Things that still need to be resolved:<br /><br />Internet in the Apartment<br />Finger nail cippers<br />Power adaptors (so I can plug things in.&nbsp; :) urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:tomneville:61242 2008-06-30T16:49:27Z 2008-06-30T16:49:27Z It's nearing the end of the first week over here and I finally have some time to sit down and write up what's been happening.&nbsp; This is really the first time I've had that I wasn't working or going out somewhere, or about to crash.<br /><br />For those who don't know yet.. I'm over in the Czech Rebpublic interviewing for a job.&nbsp; If things go well (and so far, they are..) then I will likely end up moving here for 6-9 months or longer.&nbsp; I'll post more on that front when things happen.<br /><br />After a rocky start, I'm beginning to relax a bit over here.&nbsp; I'm not that comfortable around strangers anyway, and then adding not speaking the language it's even worse.&nbsp; :)&nbsp; Although, now that I think about it.. it's almost easier not knowing the language.&nbsp; Just be quiet and everyone will mostly ignore you?&nbsp; But, that's no fun.<br /><br />The first 2 nights, I slept in an apartment over the office.&nbsp; It was weird (not a good adjitive.. oh well.) and great at the same time.&nbsp; Everything here in Podebrady is old - apparently there's only one new building in the city everything else is just re-constructed.&nbsp; The electricity and water are mostly "add ons" to houses and such.&nbsp; The view wasn't all that much to look at but it was great (again, I've failed at choosing the best adjitive.&nbsp; Sigh.)&nbsp; Looking out, it was like watching old war movies or something.&nbsp; Hard to describe, just very.. wow.<br /><br />We've had dinner several times at a resturant called Septime (I think that's how it's spelled, but it's pronounced sep-teem.)&nbsp; I believe it's owned by an actor over here?&nbsp; VERY good food.&nbsp; (Although, I've only had a couple of pizzas.. ham, cheese, olives and mushrooms and a four cheese pizza (with no tomato sauce..))<br /><br />We've also eaten at several other resturants.&nbsp; All have had good food.&nbsp; Yesterday, we ate at a small place just up the street.&nbsp; I had a light lunch (Josh suggested it.. and thankfully ordered it.&nbsp; :)&nbsp; What's odd is that I would NEVER have considered eating it at home.&nbsp; It was a salad with tomatos, corn, green peppers (yes.. I did eat some of them..) cucumbers chicken and a light dill ranch type dressing.&nbsp; It was good, and I was suprised that I liked it.<br /><br />Josh and Zora took us to a steak house the other night.&nbsp; Wow, we had (Wish I could remember the czech..) "beer and steaks".&nbsp; It wasn't on the menu like that, just in inside joke kind of thing.&nbsp; The beer wasn't bad - first one in years.. not the last.&nbsp; :)&nbsp; The steak however was a top 5 steak.&nbsp; It was a bacon wrapped filet, potatos and green beans.&nbsp; Wow.&nbsp; <br /><br />On the drive there and during dinner it was raining, it was a good storm too..&nbsp; after the storm the view was amazing.&nbsp; The resturant, Cafe Romantica, is up on a hill and overlooks the valley.&nbsp; The sun broke thru the clouds lighting up the valley under the clouds.. just amazing.&nbsp; We got up between the appetizers and the main course to go out and look.&nbsp; While we were out there, we inspected a bunker.&nbsp; (Gun slots.. everything.)&nbsp; <br /><br />And the drive back was an adventure too.&nbsp; Ping me some time.<br /><br />One thing that I heard about Cz land before coming over here is that the beer is cheaper than water.&nbsp; That is true.&nbsp; So.. I've started having a beer every now and then with dinner.&nbsp; Found a couple that I like.. <br /><br />The first morning I was here Pavlina (She's amazing!&nbsp; She's able to keep up with things and so organized.&nbsp; If not for her, then this wouldn't have gone so well.&nbsp; :) took me to Albert's.&nbsp; (A local grocery chain.)&nbsp; I got some stuff spent 210 crowns and ate breakfast and lunch for a copule of days.&nbsp; (That's about $14 or so.)<br /><br />I think I've lost 10 pounds or more by now.&nbsp; We walk EVERYWHERE.&nbsp; I would bet that I spend an hour or more a day walking somewhere.&nbsp; (Who'd have thought??)&nbsp; Our flat is about a 11 minute walk up the Kolanad and over to the office.&nbsp; There's a corner grocery store a couple of blocks up the street from our flat.&nbsp; (Just got back from there getting breakfast and some toilet paper.)&nbsp; Will be interesting to see how much I lose by the time I go home on the 14th (I'll likely be returning shortly after that..&nbsp; to go to work.)<br /><br />Like I said, Pavlina has been amazing.&nbsp; Neither Terry or I speack Czech, so she's been interperter and contract reviewer and phone comany caller.. just everything.&nbsp; (We need to get something for her..)&nbsp; She setup 4-5 apartments for us to look at.&nbsp; First one was too hot.. second was perfect (we had already setup the appointments for the rest or I wouldn't have bothered.&nbsp; :)&nbsp; Third one had a weird woman that would have been our landlord.&nbsp; She specifically said that she would come in once a month and make sure we were cleaning good enough.&nbsp; And that she'd be happy to come in and clean once a month for an extra 1000 crowns.&nbsp; (The apartment we were looking at was only 10000 crowns a month.)<br /><br />The one we ended up renting (second one we saw) is 5500 crowns a month plus another 1500-2000 crowns in utilities.&nbsp; That's about $438 a month split between Terry and I.&nbsp; And.. it's a small percentage of our monthly salary too.. <br /><br />We're going to Ikea here in a little while to order some furnature.&nbsp; (We'll have it delivered here next week.)&nbsp; BTW - It's pronounced ick-e-a, and unlike the american version, it's cheap furnature over here.&nbsp; :)<br /><br />Oh.. the joke from the other day - Terry opened up a bank account here.&nbsp; I called it his Czeck account.. <br /><br />I expected the language thing to be a huge barrier, but it's not been that.&nbsp; Terry and I have gone into stores and bought towls, pillows, food all that..&nbsp; with no problems.&nbsp; We've had to work at it for a while, but nobody (including the guys at the pub last night) got iritated or upset or any of that.&nbsp; Most people even go out of their way to figure out what you're saying or want.&nbsp; I'm getting more comfortable with going out on my own to shop or whatever too.&nbsp; <br /><br />I am starting to learn a little Czech, the few required things.. Yes, No, Hello, Good Day, Thanks, Check Please..&nbsp; One of the benifits of the company I'm going to work for is they offer Czeck language classes after work for free.&nbsp; (The company has people from all over.. America, Czeck, Ukrane, Philipean Islands, England..)&nbsp; So, hopefully.. I'll end up learning at least one new language out of this as well.&nbsp; :)<br /><br />This trip to Europe has been very different from my last vacation over here.&nbsp; That time, I didn't really work to fit in.&nbsp; (Learning the language, pay attention to money, or things like that.)&nbsp; This time over here it's very different.&nbsp; I'm in one place (SMALL town..) working with the people.. kinda hard to avoid it.&nbsp; :)<br /><br />And, the people here have been amazing.&nbsp; Everyone has been friendly, open and gone out of their way to help me fit in.&nbsp; Last night, Terry and I were invited over to the apartment of some of the guys from the office.&nbsp; Mark fixed some amazing steaks (several of them.. he just took a cooking class.) We watched The Bank Job, I fell asleep a couple of times during the movie (I had a beer and 1/2 glass of wine with dinner..)<br /><br />So far, it's been a great time.&nbsp; I'm looking forward to going to work and living here for a while.&nbsp; We are getting an extra futon for the common area of the apartment.. everyone is invited.. as long as the couch is open.&nbsp; :)<br /><br />Enough for now, more later. urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:tomneville:61097 2006-04-04T11:14:22Z 2006-04-04T11:14:22Z Fans in the equipment room. I flipped the switch yesterday, and didn't use any core sleep. So it was my first day on the full uberman schedule. (20 minute naps every 4 hours.. 2 hours of sleep in every 24. Or.. 22 hours of consciousness in every 24 hours.)<br /><br />First a little about what's happened since my last update. I've continued with taking my polynaps ever 4 hours for 20 minutes. (Dropped back from 30 minutes to 20 - made a difference. Not waking up as tired.) I have been doing about 3 hours of core sleep per night with no problems at all. (If the full uberman thing doesn't work out, I'll fall back to this.. it's a beautiful thing.)<br /><br />The move to 1.5 hours core didn't go so well. The biggest reason was that I wasn't getting up when the alarm went off - and going back to sleep. The other was that I was skipping naps or pushing them too far out. Since I wasn't all that tired at 1:00a this morning.. I made the final decision to jump to the uberman schedule. <br /><br />As far as yesterday went, no problems.. I wasn't really tired at all until right before my naps. Then it wasn't a crash out tired, just ok - I'm ready for my nap tired. I am 99% sure I dreamt in each of them and they all seemed like they were hours long. (Both very good signs.) I've also read that the 3a-4a time frame is the worst - and that's usually when crashes happen. Not me.. it was weird. I got up at 1:20 or so, fixed a bowl of cereal, read email, browsed around for a few, played Second Life for a while.. never really feeling tired at all.<br /><br />I showered and went to bed for my 5:00a nap. After that (ALMOST overslept - didn't get up right when the alarm went off..) headed down here to the office. Last week, I worked the 4a-2p schedule. Paul thought I should be here more hours when everyone else is.. SO - I'm now trying a 4-10 hour days per week schedule. 6a-4p, MTWT. Personally, I'm looking forward to having all 3 day weekends from now on. :)<br /><br />I've cleaned more around the house in the last few days than I have the entire time I've lived there. I'm also starting to unpack things now that I've got the time. :) Some other things on my to-do list: Building a huge telescope from a sonotube, home automation stuff w/ Mr House, robotics, walking/riding bikes.. updating my live journal.. <br /><br />Oh well.. enough for now. Back to work. :) (BTW - 24*365*95 = 832,200. I intend to see the year 2100. :) urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:tomneville:60709 2006-03-23T05:46:05Z 2006-03-23T05:46:05Z Weird slience Or at least I'm calling it that. When I started this, I expected having to take a week off work to jump to polyphasic sleep all at once. However, I had an apifany one morning a while ago - this is a lifestyle change. So, start with the naps now.<br /><br />That was a couple of weeks ago. Before I started this, I was averaging around 7-8 hours of sleep per night. There were times during the day (more days than not..) that I was tired, really tired. After I started with the naps every 4 hours, I didn't feel as tired during the day or at night. I ended up moving back to about 6-6.5 hours of sleep per day.<br /><br />I did that for a week or so.. and then Saturday happened. I decided to move to 4 hours of what's called core sleep. (Basically.. one large nap of 4 hours - usually during the night in place of normal sleep.) I did that, then we headed down to Louisville to look at motorcycles. I drove down and back. I was a little worried by that, but it worked out ok. Suprisingly I really wasn't tired during the day, that is until we got back to Paul and Katie's. Then, like a lightswitch it hit me.. headache and my stomach wasn't quite right. I was TIRED. <br /><br />We took off to see Elmo with Andy. I managed to drift in and out of sleep on the drive from Fishers to the Murat. After that 20 minutes of sleep I was amazed - completely refreshed. We went to Ball Park Pizza after the show and then back up to Paul and Katies no longer even thinking about sleep. Basically, I went the whole day with about 4.5 hours of sleep. Problem was.. I was beat, and not doing well when we got back. I ended up sleeping over my next nap and ended up with about 10 hours of sleep on Sunday. (I woke up, but chose not to get up.. and fell back asleep.)<br /><br />Monday and Tuesday I ended up back at the 6 hours (4 of that was core) of sleep for the day. That went great, not tired at all.. Then today (after reading the uberman group archives on Yahoo..) I moved to 3 hours of core sleep. I wasn't sure what to expect, but went ahead with it. I took my naps at 1 (3 hours core), 5a, 9a, 1p, 5p, 9p and now I'm waiting for my 1a (core) nap. All day today, I wasn't at all tired. At no point was I thinking I need a nap.. like I used to when sleeping monophasicaly. There was ONE point today (right before my 1p nap..) that I closed my eyes and thought I could really sleep. It was naptime.. so I did.<br /><br />SO.. bottom line here's why I call it a success even if I never go any further.. At 6 hours of sleep per day, that's 2 extra hours of spare time. I can do 6 hours with absolutely NO effort at all.. and the best part is that I'm wide awake the whole day. Instead of running up and down the scale throught the long day (wide awake and full of energy in the morning and tired ready for bed at night..) I'm now wide awake the whole day.. None of this tired and getting ready for bed stuff.<br /><br />Moving to 3 hours core sleep (total 4.5 hours per day..) hasn't been at all difficult either. Like I said, I wasn't at all tired today at all (very different than the other saturday.) It's 12:23pm right now, and I'm about to head off for my 1a (core sleep) nap - I'm ready for it, but I don't NEED it. I think I could go on with a 25 minute nap - no problem.<br /><br />SO.. the plan is, to do 3 hours core sleep over the weekend and move to 1.5 hours core on Monday. (BTW - 3 hours and 1.5 hours are those times because they match up with the 90 minute REM cycles of normal sleep.) Then I'll do 1.5 hours all next week and when I don't have to worry about work any more (I'll make up some comp time during the week and take Thrurs (poss?) and Friday off..) I'll drop the 1.5 hours of core and go fully polyphasic. From what I've seen so far, I don't think this will be at all difficult.<br /><br />Ok.. now the down side. Talked briefly with Katie tonight, and she brought up the only real problem or issue that I can come up with. The schedule isn't practical. I don't see it as that big of an issue.. so far, I've not had problems with naps. (If I drive on the Southern Honda trip, someone will cover for me 30 minutes every 4 hours - I'll be fully polyphasic by then.) It's something to think about, but not that big of an issue. (I don't seem to have any problem shifting naps by a couple of hours.. we'll see how that continues.)<br /><br />The other thing to mention is side effects. I've read about a few.. but really only experienced one. When I read about it, I thought WTF? It was completely un-epxected. Lately I've become very sensitive to cold at night. I've had to turn the thermostat up (normally it's 66 during sleeping hours.. but even the 68 of evening is too cold.) I now keep it at 70 degrees when I'm here. I had the shower cranked WAY up this morning just to feel comfortable. Was weird.<br /><br />Some other observations.. twice now, I've gotten up (from core sleep..) and it's still dark out. This moring was amplified because I watched the sunrise out my office window. It was just really weird to have showered, made a few stops on the way into work, worked for a while.. then see the sun come up without being tired or ready for bed. I'm looking forward to what I've read about losing the definition of a day.<br /><br />I've gotten more done in the last couple of days on some of my personal projects than I have in the last few YEARS. Today for instance, I was up at 4:00a, at work by 6:00a. I left work at 3:00p, stopped by Fry's. When I got home, I put some memory in a computer and started a CentOS install. As that was finishing, I took my 5:00p nap. Katie called shortly after I woke up and I went over for dinner and to play with Andy. When I got back, I went back to that computer. I finished up the install, cleaned things up, put the case back together.. Now, I'm posting a new LJ entry.. and about to head off to bed.<br /><br />Another thing that I'm looking forward to.. and I'm starting to feel it - I'm more relaxed. For instance - I used to get things to 90% and move to something else because I felt I didn't have time. It was working, but there was some clean up to finish with... Well, lately I've felt relaxed and able to put in the last 10% without feeling like I need to hurry and get onto something else.<br /><br />Ok.. enough for now. Time to watch a few more minutes of Who's Line and then it's off to sleeply land. urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:tomneville:60509 2006-03-17T02:27:39Z 2006-03-17T02:27:39Z Bowling alley sounds Yesterday was completely uneventful as far as sleeping goes. I took my naps, over slept on 2 of them. (Bed is BAD! Get up when the alarm goes off!) I did stay up late last night - I went to bed about 2:00a. (The night before I pushed it to 1:00a.) So, I'm slowly pushing back.. The plan for tonight is a nap at 11:30p when I'm done with bowling. Then bed at 3:00a.<br /><br />Today, I slept pretty well during lunch. I woke up in the middle of my nap, then managed to get mostly back to sleep before I had to get up. One thing I'm noticing about the naps so far, my mind isn't settleing down very well. Lunch nap that wasn't quite as noticable.<br /><br />Tonight, I took a nap before bowling. This nap was different, took a little less time to get to sleep.. but not that much. I was OUT, no clutter when trying to get to sleep. The unexpected part was that I had a dream during this nap. I wasn't really expecting to have any REM sleep until I really started restricting my sleep. So far, I'm under by an hour or two and that's it.<br /><br />Not only was I rewarded with a dream, but it was a lucid dream. I was pushing my Honda around (picking the back end up like a wheelbarrow from the back..) trying to get past some big holes. I parked my car in the driveway and when I got out, I found Darth Vader and Lord Sideous running around my car fighting. At that point, I said.. I'm dreaming. :) So, I used the force and picked up a car and threw it at Lord Sideous. A few minutes later, the alarm went off and I woke up. I felt completely refreshed and in a great mood - which is still there.. <br /><br />With the whole going slow thing, I had figured I'd just get used to sleeping at those times and not really reach REM sleep until I had stopped normal sleep (forcing my brain to adjust and enter REM quickly.) If this contines, and I reach REM most of my naps tomorrow.. I'm probably going to flip the switch and give it a try tomorrow night for over the weekend. urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:tomneville:60220 2006-03-15T04:02:16Z 2006-03-15T04:03:33Z Star Trek: Deep Space Nine - One Little Ship It's been a while since I've updated. Problem is nothing interesting ever happens. (I know, that's my fault.) This'll give me something to write about for a while anyway.<br /><br />I'm going to give myself 6 hours of free time every day for my birthday. It also sounds like a fun experiment - Polyphasic Sleep. (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyphasic" title="For more information" target="NewWindow">Wikipedia</a> - also there's plenty of information on the Internet about it.) Quick basic info - I'll be sleeping 20 minutes out of every 4 hours from now on. That means about 2 hours of sleep per day.<br /><br /><a name="cutid1"></a><br /><br />The 'normal' procedure is to pick a day and just switch. Everyone reports it as hell week. I'm going to take the week after my birthday as vacation. (I'll still work and make it back as comp time. This will allow me to work as I want to, when I feel up to it.) Since I don't like to wait for anything, I'm going to start slowly now. I'm wondering if that'll make hell week any easier?<br /><br />In fact, I started yesterday with a single nap. Today, I did make all my naps - and within an hour of when I was supposed to. The first nap today was kind weird - sleeping in the middle of the work and all. (Don't worry I'll make up the time..) I made it to sleep, but wasn't dreaming. (Would like to dream before hell week..)<br /><br />The 6:00p nap when I got home went well.. again, made it to sleep but no dreams. The 9:00p nap went really good.. no dreaming, but did make it to sleep for quite a while. When I woke up from the 9:00p nap (from the alarm..) I really didn't want to get up. (One of the points from the net that I've read is get up right away or you risk over sleeping.) I got up when the washer finished so I could move things around.<br /><br />The thing that struck me to day was how short it was between each nap. Seemed like I was going back to bed right after I had gotten up. I'm looking forward to how everything I've read says that days run into each other and you lose the concept of a day. <br /><br /><br /><br />Oh.. I also made my bed today. What I thought about was weird.. if all goes according to plan, I'll not have a bed to make in October. (Will be declared a success in 6 months.. if it works that long.)<br /><br />Oh well.. off to watch Corpse Bride. urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:tomneville:60133 2004-03-04T03:38:06Z 2004-03-04T03:38:06Z The Simpson's - Who shot Mr. Bruns Today was weird. I woke up this morning dreaming. I don't remember what it was about the first time around, but then I went back to sleep. I went back to sleep then was dreaming again when I woke up. This time around, I remembered. I was dreaming about being with the family. Grandma Rowley was there with us and we were playing cards. I got mad when I lost and threw down my cards. (Just like I used to do a long time ago.) The other weird part of the day was mom called during the meeting. She left a voice mail when I didn't answer the phone. There seemed to be some concern in her voice when I listened to it. I tried to caller her back and it was busy followed by two RNAs. Come to find out, they were gone and she had some problems with their DSL.<br /><br />I was a little late getting into the office. We went on into the WOT operations meeting. After the meeting, i t was back to the office for a while. Paul and I took off for our newest pop. (We had some issues to work out.) After that, we headed back up to the office. After some short work on email and talking, we took off.<br /><br />Chris, Dan, Paul and I headed over to Saham's (after taking care of the dogs) for dinner. I ate more then I really should have, but had a light lunch and goldfish for breakfast. So, I was bad.. but not that bad. So, we'll have to see if we lose weight - probably not though. We talked about some plans for different things at the office. After dinner, we headed back to Paul and Katie's. Short dog walk and then down to the basement.<br /><br />I'm back here at the house, watching The Simpson's relaxing and getting ready for bed.<br /><br />Oh - I did call the University of Phoenix. My credits from ITT will transfer over there. I did check with IUPUI, and they don't take transfers from UofP or ITT. Makes me wonder about the credits from UofP - will they be worth anything? Could they be transfered anywhere? So, I'm going to talk with IUPUI about going back there. I guess I also need to figure out an eventual goal for learning. Is it just a BS to be able to get a decent job? or do I want to go further? Actually, I can answer that one: I want to go further. So, I guess that answers that question. We'll see what IUPUI has to say tomorrow.<br /><br />This episode of the Simpson's is hilarious. So many little jokes here and there. Oh well.. 20 minutes of laughter and then it's off to bed. urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:tomneville:59650 2004-03-02T06:02:56Z 2004-03-02T06:03:21Z Dune I've been lazy and haven't made any entries last week. I spent the week over at Paul and Katie's taking care of the dogs. (They're on vacation.) That was fun. I slept in the guest room up there and the dogs slept on the futon with me. One night, Hannah was in a playful mood. Timmy wasn't happy with it, and I was encouraging it. <br /><br />I built a new box to take over for Pluto. (My main public server - email, web and storage.) I also ordered a gig hub, GBIC and some cards. :) (I'll have Gig-e from my laptop to the server.) Need to go in early some time in the next few days (to install the new firewall and this box.)<br /><br />Had the monthly meeting last week. Larry and I went down. On the way back, we tried to stop by the Lost Name Saloon. They were closed. We're not sure if it was permanent or a temporary thing. Disappointing, stopping there has become a standard. Larry and I stopped at Texas Roadhouse on the way back up. I haven't talked that much in a long time. We talked about flying, IQuest and a bunch of other stuff. <br /><br />Bowling sucked. We only took 2 points. My first game was probably the worst of the year, second was well above average and the third was average.<br /><br />I didn't do much over the weekend either. Saturday I went into Penn Station for lunch, as always - very tasty. One of the guys came out and sat down with me for a while and we talked. (I've talked with him off and on before. He's cute and I had a minor 'dar hit from him a long time ago.) He mentioned his girlfriend. While, it's a disappointment I guess it's also a relief. <br /><br />It also reminded me of my youth. He was bragging about breaking into computers and knocking people off line and all that. (I had told him where I worked.) He also talked about some things that I certainly wouldn't have said anything about. Mostly seemed like he was trying to impress me or something? <br /><br />So, what's my point? I guess just thinking about how different I think I am now? How even though youth is more attractive, it's not what I really want. Dunno.<br /><br />Saturday night I cleaned up the house. (There was a possibility that we would be having dinner here at the house and I wanted it to look good.) Something I should have done a long time ago. I think I'll start taking a day a week and unpacking and cleaning up.<br /><br />Mom, Ryan and the two girls they're fostering came up for dinner on sunday. She wanted Mongolian BBQ. Dinner was great! When I got back here to the house, I did some laundry.<br /><br />I've been driving the honda quite a bit the last few days. It seems to have lost some of it's power. I'm hoping it's just that it needs a tune up. I'm going to take it in sometime this week.<br /><br />Today (monday) I managed to get quite a bit done on the spam levels task. (Users will be able to select how aggressive they want the tagging to be - simply adjusting the threshold that SpamAssassin tags at.) I should probably have it done tomorrow or wednesday? After work, I came up here to the house and I've been mostly just watching TV.<br /><br />I've really not had much motivation in a while. Working on that program at the office was fun today. I need to get back to riding the bike and exercising I have more energy and motivation then.<br /><br />Oh well.. that's enough for today. Time to finish watching Dune then it's time to head off to bed. urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:tomneville:59501 2004-02-24T03:53:22Z 2004-02-24T03:53:22Z Good Eats Woke up early this morning and took care of the dogs. I headed over to the house, showered and took off for the office. I was in there shortly after 8:00a. Problems with credit cards today. (Actually, they've been there for a while.. but I wasn't doing anything about them.) We had trouble getting ahold of IEA, but finally got it solved about 6:30p. <br /><br />I also wrote the rest of the bandwidth display stuff for the wireless stuff. Very cool little box showing percentage of utilization. Very cool. Chris and I ran up to Quizno's for lunch today. I came back up here to the house about 5:30 or so. When I got here, I talked with Dale from IEA for a while. (So.. for those of you that are counting, I'm up on the week. :)<br /><br />Headed back to the house and did a load of laundry. Now, I'm back up here with the puppies about to head off to bed. urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:tomneville:59234 2004-02-23T03:42:53Z 2004-02-23T03:45:08Z The furnasty. <b>Friday night</b><br /><br />The strangest thing happened to me tonight.. I'm not even sure what started it. I had this sudden and uncontrollable urge to read a book. Not just any book either - it had to be "The Richest Man in Babylon." (Don't ask what started it - the only thing I can think of is Doomed Generation. I think it was around the last time I watched that movie that I read it the first time?)<br /><br />So, I spent the first half of the next hour searching through boxes at the house. When I didn't find it there, I spent the last half of the hour at Meijer trying to find it. I didn't though.<br /><br /><b>Saturday</b><br /><br />After taking care of the dogs, I went back to the house and showered. Then it was off to lunch - Mongolian BBQ. That was probably the best meal I've had there. Appears the trick is to put the oil on last. (After the sauce and the crushed red peppers.) Wow, that was good. I had a runny nose by the end of it. Yum!<br /><br />I headed down to the office after that. I wanted to get the wireless stuff up and going. (I told Mike that I'd probably have it done sometime this week - last week.) So, I made it. I also made up for some time that I missed (last friday - I left about the normal time even tough I was late. Then monday I left about the normal time while again being late.) I'm quite pleased with myself too. :) I managed to solve a big looming problem that really did have me worried. I had a huge memory leak in the perl daemon. At this point, that appears to be plugged. It now no longer grows when you login to check status. (Used to almost double in size each time you logged in.) I also got the web page done. Very cool. Still need to get the stats stuff up and going, but that's another day.<br /><br />I came back up here to Paul and Kaite's. After servicing the dogs, I went out for dinner. McDonald's. Quite tasty. Then I watched "The Lost Boys". Great movie. Didn't remember Michael being as cute as he was. Wow.<br /><br />While I was out today, I did stop and pickup that book. I read it off and on the rest of the day. While I was at it, I bought two copies. I think I'll give the second to Kelli.<br /><br /><b>Sunday</b><br /><br />Timmy let me sleep until almost 8:00a this morning. It did require calling him up on the bed and scratching for a while. I took care of them and headed over to the house. I showered and laid down for a while. Kelli took off for Mom and Dad's. (I skipped it so I could take care of the dogs tonight.)<br /><br />Lunch today was at Penn Station. Quite tasty. I was going to stop by Radio Shack to get some parts for the truck, but decided to take the Honda out and get it all cleaned up and ready to go. (I still need to take it into the dealer to have them look it over and make sure everything's okay with it. I also need to get the oil changed.) <br /><br />Driving around in the Honda all day was fun. I had forgotten how the contrast between the two makes each of them feel more like what they are. Going from the Honda to the truck accentuates the "BIGNESS" of the truck. Going from the truck to the Honda makes it feel small and sporty. Much fun was had today.<br /><br />For dinner, I fixed a huge heaping helping of Hamburger Helper, slimy white slice and a batch of burnt (or properly cooked - depending on who you ask) chocolate chip cookies and milk. VERY good. Fitting for the start of on-days tomorrow.<br /><br />I'm back up here at Paul and Katie's. Timmy is laying down at the end of the couch and Hannah is laying down at my feet. I think they're both wondering why the TV's off and we're not headed up to bed yet. (Just finished that book.. a thought for a new value/goal - try to plan things more and follow the plan. ie - huge project, plan it out and stick to it. Putting money away and all that.)<br /><br />Speaking of which, my last paycheck in December I put $100 into my savings account. I left it as $100 per paycheck until just a couple of checks ago. I bumped it up to 10% of my pre-tax income. I've got a little over $1k in there now.. and it's been slightly over a month, I'm looking forward to what's going to happen. Which brings me to the other piece of this. We started our 401k plan at IQuest about 2 years ago. My most recent statement shows that I'm up to $3200 or so in there. Who would have though that $40 ever two weeks would have added up like that.<br /><br />I started putting that money aside before I read this book - should have done it long ago.. if I had started in 2000 I'd probably have close to $50k in the bank by now. I did notice while reading that I'm doing quite a few of the things in that book, surely from the last time I read it.<br /><br />Oh well.. enough of that. Time to watch a little television and then head off to bed so I can get up and go to work tomorrow. urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:tomneville:58907 2004-02-21T05:33:41Z 2004-02-21T05:33:41Z The Doom Generation <b>Wednesday night</b><br /><br />Paul and I took a dinner flight up to Vince's in Muncie. We took off from Mt. Comfort (MQJ) and flew up to Muncie. After dinner, we flew back and did the downtown tour. (VIDEO!) On the way into Munice, I did the VOR 20 approach. Paul was giving me direction on descent and planning and all that. I was having trouble keeping up with the approach. I need to practice! <br /><br />This time around, everything worked. I got some very good video of Indy at night, audio turned out good, and the GPS got a good track log of the entire flight! I pulled the video and audio into Final Cut. I also pulled the track log into MacGPS. The author claimed it would play back the track log in realtime (I was going to use Snapz to take a video of it.) Then I can overlay the video of my approach and downtown with the GPS track log in real time. :)<br /><br />I had trouble exporting the video to Quictime. The audio worked great, but the video seemed stuck on the first frame. Haven't had time to get back to it yet.. hopefully some time this weekend I'll get it dumped out and posted.<br /><br /><b>Thursday</b><br /><br />Bowling.. We took all 8 points tonight at bowling. The second game was a little on the close side. After bowling, it was bed time. I was beat.<br /><br /><b>Friday</b><br /><br />Chris called before I left for work, he was calling about the Kolache Factory. It's a good thing too, I was going to stop there on the way in. That hit the spot. I ended up not going out for lunch today, was going to leave at the normal time today (even though I was a little late getting in.) I didn't leave until about 5:30 or so anyway.<br /><br />I headed up to Paul and Katie's to take care of the dogs. We had a short walk, I fed them and then another short walk. After that, I headed back down to my house. I went though the mail, watched some TV and took a nap. About 9:30p I ran up to Penn Station for dinner.<br /><br />I'm back here at Paul and Katie's watching some TV and playing with the dogs. <br /><br />Oh yeah, Chris did send me a link to a salary web page. From the looks of it, I'm about 10-30k below where I should be. Sigh. (BTW - Not a surprise.) urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:tomneville:58652 2004-02-18T15:58:24Z 2004-02-18T15:58:24Z Mirrorshades / We Don't Take-Information Society-Hack <b>Sunday</b><br /><br />Kelli and I took off for mom and dad's pretty early - around 11:00a or so. We stopped by McDonald's on the way down for lunch. I spent most of the day working on their laptop. I got Windows installed and all their stuff is up on the server. (I put a server in last weekend - samba and it will also be an ssh tunnel terminator when I get the new box at 2500.)<br /><br />Dinner was pretty good, mom made apple cinnamon creme brulee. Very tasty. Dave requested that I make Tiramisu next weekend.<br /><br />We were pretty much ready to take off about 8:00p like normal, but didn't get outta there until at least 10:30p. We were giving mom a hard time for being thrifty. That was great. I haven't laughed that hard in years!<br /><br />We stopped by Steak-n-Shake for a midnight snack then it was off to bed.<br /><br /><b>Monday</b><br /><br />Stopped by the Kolache factory on the way in this morning. Other than that, mostly just worked all day and that was it. I was late and ended up taking off about the normal time. (Paul needed a ride home.) He fixed Paul steaks for dinner. They were most excellent. I came back to the house after a short dog walk - laundry was calling. I did laundry and that was about it.<br /><br /><b>Tuesday</b><br /><br />I was late again today, but stayed late enough to cover it. We had the WOT manager's meeting today. I finished up the tasks from that meeting today (wednesday.) Lunch today was at that nasty disgusting gyro place.<br /><br />My cable came in today. I ordered that cable from another supplier who said it was on back order (and has been for almost 2 months!) They also screwed up and charged my credit card twice. Now, I need to go back and dispute those charges.<br /><br />I stopped by Penn Station for a quick dinner. (Wanted to do the install.) When I got up to the house, I installed that cable. It took about 15 minutes or so. (Ripped off a couple of covers on the console and the dash - then took out 4 screws. No biggie.) It sounds much clearer - doesn't have the muddy sound when the music gets busy. Next is to build another box to mix the sound from the ham radio in with the XM radio. :)<br /><br />After that, I balanced my check book. (I was missing my september statement.) SO, I did 4-5 months of statements. I've still got a few transactions that never showed up. Weird. Then it was off to bed about midnight or so. (Early for the last few days. :)<br /><br />Oh yeah, I also ordered a new rack mount case and power supply. I'm putting together a new co-lo box. (It will take the place of pluto.sneaky.net.) It will do mail, web, gallery, streaming video and ssh tunnel termination. Kinda looking forward to getting it on-line.<br /><br /><b>Wednesday</b><br /><br />I woke up dreaming this morning, but I don't really remember what it was about. I was in the office by about 8:20a - very early for the last few days. If I work late tonight, it'll cover for monday (then I need to cover friday. :) We just finished up with the WOT operations meeting. urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:tomneville:58492 2004-02-15T04:30:09Z 2004-02-15T04:30:09Z It's A Big Old Goofy World (Live)-John Prine-Great Days Anthology (Disc 2) <b>Wednesday - Jack's house</b><br /><br />I don't remember too much about work.. nothing really stands out. Lunch was at Some Guy's Pizza. Wow, that was tasty. Far too small (still trying off and on to be good.) The hostess was.. um.. strangely attractive. When we left, I think it was Paul that made the standard <a name="cutid1"></a>licks-a-lot-a-pus comment. Wow.<br /><br />As far as the on-days thing.. I've been mostly good for the last couple of days. Mostly good.. isn't completely good. I've not stepped on the scale since the other day. I'll start in earnest late next week. It's really hard to be good when you go out to eat.<br /><br />After work, Paul and I headed over to Jack's house. He had his basement re-done and bought a bunch of AV stuff. He wanted help getting it all hooked up and working. That was fun. I've always preferred making things work to just using them. We started by hooking things up with what we had. Then it was off to dinner, and a stop by Best Buy. We headed back and got everything all hooked up. After that, it was back here and off to bed.<br /><br /><b>Thursday - WINGS Seminar</b><br /><br />After work, Chris Paul and I all headed down to Columbus (KBAK) for the Wings Seminar. They covered spatial disorientation. They were also doing a study about spatial disorientation. They asked attendees to describe any situations they'd personally experienced or heard about. Up to that point, the closest I've ever come is that feeling that you're turning when your flying on instruments. (I get the feeling that I'm turning - even though all the instruments and Brad even says we're flying flat and level.)<br /><br />After the seminar, we stopped at the Sirloin Stockade. I ate WAY more than I should have. I was miserable, but the bread pudding was worth it. Wow.<br /><br /><b>Friday - Dinner flight</b><br /><br />Tonight was our dinner flight. I've been looking forward to this for days. Every since we first talked about it. It's been so long since we've all taken a dinner flight. Even better, we had a big group of people going. (3 planes - 6 people.) Also, I had the cam corder and MP3 player all ready to go.<br /><br />I took off from the office and headed up to Terry. I flew out of Terry because they had a brand new Cessna 172SP with downlinked weather and "all the good stuff." We looked at the weather a few times, but it never really did show much. (Not much going on around us.) It took forever to do the pre-flight. I walked from the plane back to the car (2-3 minute walk..) once for my backup flashlight and the other time was for a pair of gloves. I was out of there about 6:45 or so.<br /><br />I flew down to Eagle Creek to pickup Brad. We took off and I went under the hood about 20 minutes later. When we took off, we flew due east then down around the east side of down town. (Very good flight path for sight seeing.) Brad took a few pictures as we flew by, I don't know if they'll turn out though. I was under the hood until we "broke out" over KLEX. My ILS approach was pretty good, but got worse as I got closer. <br /><br />Dinner was amazing. The bread was the right kind, and they brought out some ranch dressing. Next time - No caesar salad. I had a blackened ribeye and a baked potato. Only problem was the steak was about 10 seconds over done. Finished off with a small piece of cheese cake. YUM! Definitely worth a return trip. <br /><br />When we got back, the guy from the FBO helped us de-ice the planes. He went WAY out of his way for us (and ended up not charging us anything. - Paul did give him some money though.) We took off and headed back up north. <br /><br />I was back under the hood shortly after take off. I wasn't paying that much attention and didn't have the throttle all the way in. So the return trip took a little longer than it probably should have. We were on with ATC the whole way up and down (except for hand offs and all.) I did a touch and go at KIND (GPS 32 approach.) Those GPSs are pretty cool for approaches. Once you get them loaded up. Again, I got a little squirrelly during the last minute or so of the approach. We touched down and were off again.<br /><br />Last was vectors to the localizer approach at Eagle Creek. That was the last landing of the night and it was around 2:30a. About 2-3 minutes before touch down I started getting way out of whack. I landed, dropped Brad off and headed back up to Exec.<br /><br />Once I was down, I realized that I was a complete dumb ass. NONE of the video came out. First off, I forgot to change the battery - so 1:51 into the flight it shut down. Secondly - I didn't take the lens cap off. DUH! I really wanted a shot of my downwind for 18. There seemed to be much more than the 7 knots reported wind (report was from Metro 10-15 miles away.) I went back around the pattern again. This time, with the camera running and the lens cap off. Pretty cool, I was about 30-40 degrees off the runway to stay even with it. I'll post the video at some point.<br /><br />As for the whole evening and recording it. I'm disappointed. The MP3 recorder died about 20 seconds after I turned it on at LEX. (I'm guessing batteries. Next time - fresh batteries after 2 hours. That should do it. Especially if it's after a stop.) The camcorder was completely my screw up. The pictures of downtown really didn't turn out well. I did get a picture of the hobbs meter - showing 27.8 hours! (Brad said that I've set two records with him in the last two flights - lowest time on an airplane and lowest OAT -13 degrees.)<br /><br />This flight also counts as my long cross country IFR flight. So, that's cool. We practiced precision flying most of the way back up. I finally noticed that the VSI was off by 25-50 feet per minute and the attitude indicator was off by 1-2 degrees or less. (About 1/3rd of the arrow and the bar on top.) I didn't notice all that until we were on our way back up. I have a picture of the gauges with me flying (NO AUTOPILOT!) and they're all perfect and more importantly they're all stable. <br /><br />I also stopped messing with the plane. I noticed the same thing when I watched the video from the last IFR lesson. I tend to seek back and forth. (Think about doom and how the screen used to go back and forth when you'd run.) Tonight, I found the zero point on the attitude indicator and just left it there. Seemed to work much better.<br /><br />That reminds me - I was doing amazingly well on the first 1/4 of the ILS into LEX. I said something to Brad about waning a picture of the CDI. It was perfectly centered on the ILS and glide slope and completely stable. Brad's comment was "We've got a long way to go yet." :)<br /><br />All in all - a very LONG night and a very tiring night. Paul did point out the next day that we may have been a little low on fuel when I got back to Exec. Thinking back about it, I'm not sure we were as low as I thought when he first mentioned it. I had 4.2 hours on the hobbs. (4.2*9gph = 37.8 gallons.) The plane was completely full when I started and we did lean out the mixture up and down, so.. it may not have been as bad as I though. Even worse is that I didn't even think about fuel on the way back or even when I went around the pattern that extra time.<br /><br />When I was back off from IND and climbing out, I seemed to be having issues. (Remember the spatial disorientation from thursday night?) I was REALLY busy at one point (my flying was good and I was keeping up but I was spread thin.) I had to keep watching the gauges and telling myself - THEY'RE RIGHT! Do what they say.. it felt like we were in a 20-30 degree turn. I even asked Brad if I was leveled out. Very uneasy feeling. Guess I have something to write about on that survey now. :)<br /><br />I came back here to the house and went to bed. I was really tired. I wonder if fatigue had anything to do with my last approach in to KEYE? Probably.<br /><br /><b>Saturday - Not a thing.</b><br /><br />I didn't do a thing today. Well, I kinda did. I woke up late and showered. Lunch was at Penn Station. I tried running down to Best Buy or Circuit City to get a new cable/dsl router for mom and dad. I bailed because of traffic. I came back up to the house.<br /><br />I spent the rest of the day working on Jennifer's computer and mom and dad's laptop. I have to say - I am amazed with <a href="http://www.knopper.net/knoppix/index-en.html">Knoppix</a>. It works. (Slowly - but it does work.) I booted their boxes (Windows 98 and Windows XP) with it. It saw the network I used smbmount to mount jupiter's drives and copied stuff off. No config - it even came up with X on the laptop. (Since it runs off the CD - it's SLOW, but it does run.)<br /><br />Now, it's time for bed. urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:tomneville:58310 2004-02-11T04:01:41Z 2004-02-11T04:01:41Z Scrubs I really slept in this morning. I was dreaming when I woke up, but I don't remember what it was about. It was dragging on. I showered and headed into the office. I wasn't in there until almost 10:00a. I got the wireless stuff rebuilt and this time the web server runs ok. (I was having problems getting apache, mod_ssl and mod_perl to work together. It was difficult because the perl had to be multi-threaded. It kept crashing because of a weird error about rcmdsh and an unknown user.)<br /><br />Lunch was at Qdoba. It was decent and more importantly, it was quick. We went to the WOT manager's meeting when we got back. It too seemed to drag on. (But that's not what I was dreaming about.) Spent the rest of the day working on that damed wap system. I was getting irritated with it, it was pissing me off.<br /><br />I took off for the house and the Planning Committee meeting. We were able to leave the meeting early because they announced that our issue had already been continued. When we got back, I said hi to the dogs and headed back to the house.<br /><br />Today is day number two of on days. Yesterday, I lost a little over 6lbs. Wondering about tonight and if I'll lose anything. I suspect with yesterday, I won't. Well, that's cool - I lost another 1/2 pound today. (Usually after a day like yesterday I go back up slightly and almost never continue to lose.) Only another 140 or so pounds to go. urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:tomneville:58045 2004-02-10T07:28:04Z 2004-02-10T07:28:04Z Bicentenial Man I had trouble sleeping last night. My stomach was pissed at me all night and most of this morning. I think it was the pizza from last night. It was a last meal basically. So far today, I've been good. I just had a bowl of cereal a few minutes ago, but I still think I'm a little under on points for the day. Oh well.<br /><br />Because of not being able to sleep, I was in the office fairly early (around 8:15a or so.) Spent most of the day rebuilding the iqwap box. I wasn't happy with the apache/perl install. (I manually compiled perl to get threads compiled in, instead of figuring out how to make the port do what I wanted.) I went back and re-installed and now have reinstalled the perl5.8 port and apache. So, tomorrow I'll finish up writing up the web interface and move on.<br /><br />I ended up having lunch there so I could leave early. I took off about 4:20p or so. When I got up here, I had a bowl of cereal and then took a nap. (Way too tired from last night.) When I woke up it was about 9:15p. I was STARVING. Quick trip to Marsh for some dinner. (I need to make a run to the store to stock up.. later though.) <br /><br />When I got back, I ate and now I'm watching Bicentennial Man. I really do like this movie. There's something about movies that show the entire life of someone or something. Like Andrew. Seeing him grow up and others around him die. Seeing him discover things.. seeing the relationships.<br /><br />Ok.. back to the interesting things (since I'm going to be up for a while. Naps are both good and evil.) My number 2 value/goal - my family and friends. I enjoy spending time with my family and friends. I try to do things to help them and take care of them when I can. I also try not to do things that will hurt them.<br /><br />Number 1 - "I value myself." I value myself and making sure that I am happy and have all that I want. I get a lot of stuff about this one. Some people seem to think this means that I value myself to the exclusion of others. That's certainly not the case. <br /><br />Ok, so that's all of them. Time to re-think things and decide if I need to re-arrange things or not. urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:tomneville:57817 2004-02-09T04:17:59Z 2004-02-09T04:17:59Z Star Trek: Voyager Waited too long to do this.. <br /><br /><b>Friday</b><br /><br />I don't remember much about work from friday. Lunch was at Wendy's. Paul and I ran up there for a quick close lunch. I took off around 6:00-6:30p - I think. On the way back up to the house, I stopped by the Apple Store. I picked up Final Cut Express. <br /><br />When I got back here to the house, I started playing with FCE. I'm quite pleased. I captured the instrument flight from last weekend. After some editing and positioning, the audio and video are all in sync. I was up pretty late.<br /><br /><b>Saturday</b><br /><br />We went to bowling on saturday around 2:00p. The rest of the day I mostly messed around the house and played with FCE. I did pretty well at bowling. (Certainly much better than thursday night.) <br /><br />At this point, I've got a DVD made with chapter markers and all the good stuff. :)<br /><br /><b>Sunday</b><br /><br />I tried writing out a DVD today, but the asset encoding took too long. I had to cancel the burn. Hopefully, the DVD-R will still be writable later tonight. (I'm going to let it run over night tonight.)<br /><br />On the way down to mom and dad's, we stopped by Penn Station for lunch. When we got there, I started working on the computers. The DSL router that I got from IQ is not going to work. It doesn't appear to be changing back to PAP authentication. So, I'll take something else down there next weekend.<br /><br />I took my video camera down and my still camera. Ryan wanted to take some pictures of his RC car. He spent most of the day filming and taking pictures. I helped him and showed him how to get some good shots and all. Before we took off, I wrote out a CD with the pictures and the video that he took.<br /><br />On the way back up here, we stopped by Mozzie's for a pizza. Quite tasty. I also did a quick load of laundry. It's getting to be bed time as well. urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:tomneville:57421 2004-02-06T05:18:02Z 2004-02-06T05:18:02Z The Simpson's I had the coolest dream this morning right up to the point that I got pulled over. I was driving around Paris. I started out at a light and beat some guy off the line. There was traffic, and I had to slow down and move over. I chirped the tires a little. Some gendarme noticed me. I was already past him, but using hand signals told the ahead of me to pull me over. About the time I got stopped, I woke up..<br /><br />I didn't make it into the office until 9:30a, but there was NO traffic in the way. :) I spent most of the day working on the wireless stuff. I actually feel like I got something done today. It's now fully functional. (You still have to telnet in to login, but it works.) I'm working on the web page redirect stuff now. I came up here to the house and watched a little TV before Paul picked me up for bowling.<br /><br />Lunch was a bag of popcorn today. I was going to try to be good. I made it up until dinner. Steak-n-Shake is not on-day food. Then I had a thing of nachos and a coke at bowling. Oh well, I still ate less than I usually would have. So, it's wasn't quite an on-day.. but it wasn't and off-day either.<br /><br />My first game at bowling was great, the second and third SUCKED. Oh well, we ended up losing all 8 points. Dan stopped by and watched us loose. After that, it was back up here to the house. I'm watching some TV before I head off to bed. urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:tomneville:57211 2004-02-05T04:11:25Z 2004-02-05T04:11:25Z Good Eats - Use your noodle 2 I went to bed last night about 11:00p. I was beat last night. Of course, since I went to bed early.. I woke up about 3:30a. I was dreaming, but managed to get back to sleep. I woke up right before the alarm went off, dreaming again. (I don't remember what it was about though.) I allowed a re-sleep and didn't wake up until 7:30a. AAHH - a full 8 hours of sleep.<br /><br />I didn't make it into the office until about 9:10a. (Of course, I was late for the ops meeting.) That meeting (just like the ones from yesterday) seemed to just drag on. (Chris commented about this later too..) Spent most of the afternoon working on some problems that RJ is having with Emerald. <br /><br />Lunch was at Sunrise Cafe. it was pretty good, but the service sucked. I ended up staying at the office until pretty late. (I was playing around with the Mac.) Paul called about dinner, but there wasn't time for me to get up there. (He called when they were 3 minutes from leaving.)<br /><br />I stopped by Penn Station on the way back and then Marsh. I am going to start on-days tomorrow. So, I guess that was a last meal? (That's why I'm quite full right now.) <br /><br />Bedtime. urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:tomneville:56858 2004-02-04T02:44:16Z 2004-02-04T02:44:16Z Star Trek: Voyager Well, it's now tuesday and I've not had time to update. Here we go.<br /><br /><b>Saturday</b><br /><br />FLYING! I went flying this morning. Brad and I went up and did some instrument practice and general flying around. We landed at <a href="http://www.airnav.com/airport/1I8">Converse</a>. From there, we tried to head up to Fort Wayne. There was a low overcast layer and we would have ended up with icing. Brad didn't want to mess with that so we skipped it and did an instrument approach at <a href="http://www.airnav.com/airport/KHHG">Huntington</a>. Did pretty good with it. We ended the flight with a circle to land. Quick stop, then it was off to <a href="http://www.airnav.com/airport/KMZZ">Marion</a>. We did the full ILS approach but didn't land. After that, I had one of my best landings in a very long time at <a href="http://www.airnav.com/airport/KTYQ">Indy Exec</a>. I have video of the flying, but haven't been able to put it together like I want. Probably need to pickup Final Cut or FC Express.<br /><br />I headed back here to the house and picked up Kelli. Quick stop by <a href="http://www.baskinrobbins.com/index.shtml">Baskin Robbins</a> to pickup some ice cream cakes. There was an issue with the security guard. First off, he bitched at me about sitting there waiting for Kelli by the entrance. The only way you're allowed to wait is if they're between the door and the car. WTF?!? Then, he sees my video camera. (Reviewing flying footage.) He tells me that I'm not allowed to take pictures on the mall property. Jesus.<br /><br />We headed down to mom and dad's. When we got there, everyone else was already there. We were doing Christmas with David, Donna, Jennifer and Patrick. We did go over to the church. (Mom and dad normally go then.) Dinner was veggie soup, quite good. I haven't had a fudge round cake from them in forever. (We used to get them all the time.) After dinner, the kids opened presents.<br /><br />Mom was having a problem with her computer. Ends up some spyware got installed. I tried to get rid of it, but couldn't. There were uninstall programs, but they only opened up a web page and required you to enter a confirmation code. (Don't think so.) I brought it back up here.<br /><br />We didn't make it back up here until after midnight. I was going to call Paul to go shopping for the SuperBowl party tomorrow. Didn't call him, far too late.<br /><br /><b>Sunday</b><br /><br />I got up and headed out for lunch. Penn Station! Yum! I headed over to Paul and Katie's to stare the sauce. We started the sauce and then watched some TV. Paul and I ran out to Keystone at the Crossing for some cheese stuff. (Quite tasty.) Mom, Kelli and Ryan got there first. Kelli and Ryan went down and played pool we stayed up stairs and talked (while we kept cooking.)<br /><br />Russ got there, then everyone else started getting there. The spaghetti was ready about the time the game started. I grabbed a plate and got started. Very good. Brad got there later. I showed them the video tapes from saturday. (None of them were edited, so it was just a bunch of flying around.) Then we went back to last weekend (steep turns, landing and BFR.) <br /><br />Brad, Chris and I went downstairs. They were going to play a game of pool. We ended up playing pool (and talking about flying) during the half time and most of the second half. I was giving Brad hints (seemed like he didn't know how to play.) He was doing better than I would have figured he would have. Oh well. Ended up watching the last few minutes of the game. We cleaned up and headed upstairs.<br /><br />Mom and Ryan stayed the night at my house tonight. I do enjoy having house guests. Ryan and I made a video tape of his <a href="http://www.xmodsrc.com/home/index.php">XMods</a> car. I didn't get to bed until 1:30 or so. I was planning on taking tomorrow morning off so I could visit with everyone.<br /><br /><b>Monday</b><br /><br />I woke up about 6:20 with the alarm. (I set it so I could get up and go through email and not be working until midnight.) Had a very enjoyable time talking with Mom while we were waiting on Kelli and Ryan to wake up. Mom watched FoodTV. (They can't get it down there in Nashville. I need to start recording stuff and taking it down to them.) I started the install on a substitute computer for them. (Finished it before they took off. I still need to get their old laptop copied off and re-installed.)<br /><br />We took off for to fix Kelli's truck. (It died last night.) Only problem with it was it had run out of gas. We picked Ryan up and they got ready to take off. Lunch was at BD's Mongolian BBQ. VERY tasty. We had a lot of fun there. We all split a fudge brownie sunday. Did I mention that lunch today was excellent. Probably one of the best ever meals there. Wow.<br /><br />I didn't make it into the office until after 4:30p. Did some reports for Jack, but I don't remember what else I did during the day. Around 7:40 or so, all hell broke loose. Long story short - I ended up downtown working on the network. (NO Jr Ops person down there. Sigh.) The problem ended up being my development server. It got infected by the SQL worm. (Hey.. wait a minute, that server had an SA password on it. WTF. I need to look at that again.) That started spewing data out to the net. That killed the <a href="http://www.extremenetworks.com/libraries/prodpdfs/products/summit48i.asp">Extreme 48i</a> in our network.. which caused the OSPF processes to keep bouncing.<br /><br />Before I left, we got the entire ops department on the phone with Mike. We were all going on about the 48i and how it just needs to go away. That box has caused problems more than once, with exactly the same problem. (Yeah, I should have found this earlier.. but still.) We're going to investigate moving over to a Cisco box. (IMHO - It NEVER should have been an Extreme. We never had a chance in that fight though.)<br /><br />Oh yeah.. how could I forget. That 48i rebooted it's self at one point. It took Dan to remember why that was. (This is the part that I can't believe..) He said that the reboot was normal. The box is designed to reboot if it has a sustained very high load. WTF?!? That just makes no sense to me.<br /><br />I got to looking and the firewall at Henry Street was down. That's what allowed the worm into the SQL server. So, that was part of the problem, the other was that I didn't keep that server patched. <br /><br />I had planned on starting on-days today. I was kidna bad at lunch, but would have been ok if I had just had a snack. I didn't do anything about dinner until 10:00p. I stopped on the way back up to the house at Steak-n-Shake.<br /><br /><b>Tuesday</b><br /><br />Today.. I didn't get up until late. I showered and got into the office about 8:30 or so. Mostly did email and some more reports for Jack. We had a couple of meetings today. The normal Manager's meeting.. a support meeting to give out the Employee of the Month trophy. The last was a meeting for the men in the building. It was about the problems with the bathroom.<br /><br />Lunch today was at MCL. I really don't like MCL. Ordinarily I would have gone somewhere else, but today Kevin was joining us for lunch. So, rather than be rude to Kevin.. I went to MCL.<br /><br />I took off at 5:30 and headed up to Paul and Katie's. I stopped by Panera and picked up some bread for dinner. Paul fixed fondu. Very tasty. After dinner, we walked the dogs and I headed back here to the house. I'm doing laundry right now, and watching TV. I'm tired and would like for bedtime to be here.. urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:tomneville:56604 2004-01-31T05:29:26Z 2004-01-31T05:29:26Z The Simpson's What else would I be doing at work? :) Got home from bowling too late last night. Ok, so I didn't finish this at work. I'm at home now.<br /><br /><b>Thursday</b><br />Work sucked. Although, I did get the RADIUS queueing stuff up and going on the wireless stuff. (Queues up RADIUS accounting requests, then submits them to however many servers you put in the config file.) I'm pretty happy with the queuing stuff.<br /><br />Lunch was at the Chicago Grill today. I wasn't too thrilled with the choice. Everybody else liked it, but I wouldn't be disappointed if I never went back there. I had a cheeseburger and fries. The cheeseburger was cooked up ahead of time, so it was a little dry. The fries were way too thick - not enough crunchies on the outside.<br /><br />I was going to work late tonight and go straight down to bowling. Wasn't really in the mood to do that, so I took off and headed up here to the house. Shortly after I got here, we took off for bowling. No time for Ball Park Pizza, so we called and had Brian bring one to bowling. We also picked up some cookies!<br /><br />I kinda sucked during bowling. We did end up winning 6 of 8 points. We are in first place! YAY! <br /><br /><b>Friday</b><br />Today was mostly quiet. I managed to get the development machine down for the wireless stuff. I've got my workstation behind it right now. Now that I have that, I can start working on making it really do the work it's supposed to do. Other than that, not much happened today. Lunch was out at MQJ today. <br /><br />I took off and headed up here to the house. I took a nap, then ran out to get dinner. Penn Station! Yum. I stopped by Meijer to find a mount for the video camera. Ended up with a clip on light. When I got back here to the house, I put that with the wimpy tripod from Europe. Looks like it'll work well. We'll see how it works tomorrow. If successful, it'll end up on a web page.<br /><br />Oh well, bed time. I'm tired.. will go into number 2 tomorrow. urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:tomneville:56543 2004-01-29T04:11:58Z 2004-01-29T04:12:46Z The Simpson's I was up late last night (working on a rebuilt pluto and talking with Terry.) So, of course I was late getting into the office. I didn't make it in there until about 9:30p. Nice easy drive in, no traffic. Seemed like I had stuff going on every minute of the day, it did just fly by. It was after 5:00p by the time the WOT operations meeting was over. <br /><br />Lunch was at Arby's today. I had suggested buckets of cheese, but Paul and Katie had mexican last night. Katie suggested Shapiro's, but I've never liked them much either. So, we ended up at Arby's. Then we drove downtown to submit some background checks for new employees. Quick stop by O'Malia's on the way back up. I picked up a Roslyn Alligator coffee cake. (VERY tasty.) I didn't get butter for it though.<br /><br />Did some shopping on iTunes music store. Was in the mood for some new music. Got a phone call right before I left the office from a customer that's been around since the beginning. He recognized me and I recognized his voice. We talked about Bob and meetings and the past and all that. Looks like they're having collisions on their ethernet. He's going to do some tests and send me email tomorrow. Also worked with one of the support guys on a routing problem. Weird - we did a clear "ip ospf 101 process" and it was solved. Ends up I was about an hour over tonight. (I'm going to work over the next few nights to cover monday morning.)<br /><br />Paul and Katie called, and we met up at Outback for dinner. The waiter was obviously brand new, I'm sure this was his first night actually waiting on people. He did a good job too. (He was cute too!)<br /><br />On the drive home, I stopped by BP to get gas. They had a problem with the pump. The display wasn't counting up, but I could clearly hear the pump running. (Didn't notice it until it was mostly done.) Without even really thinking about it.. when I finished up - I went inside and told the attendant what was up. She looked and I was charged correctly (she gave me a receipt.) Guess that's another example of tonight's value.<br /><br />I'm back up here at the house now, watching some TV. I tried doing some updates to my <a href="http://citation.followell.net/lolsite/display_logbook.php?pilot=tomn" target="_new">LOL</a>. Had some problems double checking the page of data that I entered, so I bailed. (I'll work on it tomorrow.)<br /><br /><br />This is one of the most important values. Number 3 - "I have integrity." This one, I live up to. The last time I told a lie was to one of our customers about 4-6 years ago. Even then, it wasn't really that BAD of a lie. I told them that we had a redundant setup for their data. We didn't, but we had the parts and software to implement it. I had everything all setup by the time they signed the contract. S0.. it wasn't really that bad. Before that, it's been a long time. (There was one other back then, more on that tomorrow.) One thing that really does bother me is the thought that someone might think I'm lying, dishonest or might steal something. (This is partly due to the things that I had to do at my former job to keep the company in business.)<br /><br />The one down side to this, and I've not been able to over come this yet.. I'll not say anything instead of saying something that's a lie. Mostly this is when I'm pissed off and people are trying to figure out why. (Too worried about pissing them off?) I think I just found a new number 4 value. That's probably the only way to get me to actually do something about this one.<br /><br />Thinking back to the start of my private journal, I have three rules:<br /><br />1. No lies<br />2. Nothing hidden<br />3. Nothing changed/deleted - add to it to explain things, but DON'T CHANGE WHAT YOU PUT IN THERE.<br /><br />If I thought about it (and remembered it..) it went in there. Those first two rules are something I've wanted when I find a boyfriend. (Hard to change/delete things in the real world.) It's also something that I've wanted to implement with friends and family too. Would probably make things easier and certainly would leave fewer people in the world wondering "what the hell is he thinking?" (I tend just shut up and steam instead of telling people that I'm pissed off.) Hiding things (being pissed off at someone or not wanting to argue about things or not wanting to piss them off) has caused more problems than I'm sure it would solve to just say what I'm thinking.<br /><br />Oh well, enough for tonight.. bed time. urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:tomneville:56234 2004-01-28T06:46:00Z 2004-01-28T06:46:00Z Will & Grace <b>Tuesday</b><br />More snow today! YAY! Driving today was fun. On the way back to the house from Meijer (new wallet and right guard) I put the truck through it's paces. All the way down to locking the rear differential and going into 4-LOW. Don't know if it does any good or not, but I do that at least once a year. Other than that, I spun out a few times here and there (intentionally!) <br /><br />Didn't do too much at work today. Did come up with a cool idea for our support mail. The WOT meeting seemed to drag on. I ended up skipping lunch - no time before the meeting. After the meeting, I did run up to CVS. Frito's, queso and pepsi. I took off about 5:30p or so - about 30 minutes longer than I really needed to stick around. Talked with Chris for a while during the drive.<br /><br />When I got here, I watched a little TV and then took a nap. I woke up about 8:30p and headed over to Penn Station for dinner. Then it was a run over to Meijer. Oh yeah, I had a blond moment last night. I didn't take my wallet out before I put them in the washer. So, I had a pile of wet stuff when I pulled them out of the dryer. <br /><br />Number 5 - "I am loyal." I am loyal to my friends, family and company. This one doesn't really come up all that often, but it belongs on here to keep things in perspective. Actually, I don't know why this is here.. it's kinda duplicated in some others. Hrm - still thinking on this one. It'll be rearranged at some point. urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:tomneville:55835 2004-01-27T05:04:56Z 2004-01-27T05:04:56Z 90210 <b>Saturday</b><br />I really didn't do much all day. I did run out about noon or so, to pickup some stuff. I got an <a href="http://www.samsungusa.com/cgi-bin/nabc/yepp/yepp_product_detail.jsp?eUser=&amp;prod_id=YP-55V/XAA">MP3 player</a> (that can record.) I got cables and some other stuff for flying. From there, it was up to the airport.<br /><br />When I got up to the airport, we did the paperwork (copying licenses and all.) We noticed that I hadn't had a BFR (in the endorsement section in the back of my logbook.) (I did have one quite a while ago, but the instructor didn't sign off the back of the logbook.) Brad and I sat down and reviewed.<br /><br />After that, it was out to the plane. We took off, did 2 landings over at Sheridian. First one SUCKED. I was way low and slow. Second was better. We headed over to Lebanon. I did 3 landings and 1 low approach.. I was too high on a simulated engine out. I did a couple of other landings over at Indy Exec. The last one was a simulated engine out, and I wasn't sure I was going to make it. Ended up cutting the corner pretty close..<br /><br />Between Lebanon and Indy Exec we did have some fun. We did slow flight, lots of stalls. At one point, we were in slow flight and brad said to turn over to 45 degrees and maintain altitude. The stall horn was screaming, but it did it. I was amazed. The DG was spinning. Lots of fun. Brad demonstrated just how little force is necessary to roll the plane with the wings unloaded. (That's the only time I got a little bothered by motion was during the very low g's at the top of the arc.) He did pull a couple of g's at another point and I reached up to catch the camera. That was weird, my arm felt like it weighed 50 pounds. The last couple of things we did were stalls with no rudder. (Yeah, it will do it..) We also did one more stall with 1/2 the right rudder pushed down.<br /><br />I had several occasions that if I hadn't acted, the plane would have gone into a stall. I didn't have any problems with anything we did saturday. I think I am more prepared today for anything that might happen in the future. Besides that, it was ALOT of fun. I am looking forward to getting to aerobatic flying one of these days.<br /><br />When I got back, I captured the video and cockpit voice (mp3 player!) The voice recording was very clear, only problem was it was a little over driven. (May build something to quiet it down. The MP3 player came with a cable for encoding. I picked up a converter for the headphone plug to 1/8" stereo and that was it. It plugs into the headphone jack in the back seat and sits in the drink holder. When done, it's a USB drive. Just copy the file off. It should hold about 4 hours of audio or more. (will need 2 AAA batteries for that though.)<br /><br />The video worked out great too. I did run out of tape and I need a clamp on mount to hold it. Next time, I'll take another battery and more tapes. Also try to make the mount for it too. (Prolly try to get a mount for the GPS on there too.) Oh yeah, it also effected the compass by about 60 degrees.<br /><br /><b>Sunday</b><br />When I woke up, I wasn't sure if I was going down to Mom and Dad's. She had called saturday and mentioned that I shouldn't try to come down there if the weather was too bad. Ends up, I did go down there but not until late. We didn't get down there until about 5:30p. The drive down wasn't too bad, worst was highway 46. Lots of idiots. The drive back was ok until about mile marker 85 on I65 - Solid sheet of ice. We delayed for about 15 minutes then got going again.<br /><br />Sunday was Dad's birthday. Baked potato soup, ham and cheese sandwiches, brownies, and cookies. YUM! He had to go to sleep because he had to work. <br /><br /><b>Monday</b><br />I didn't get up until late, then there were traffic troubles on I-69. I didn't get much done today on the wireless stuff. I spent quite a bit of time working on a problem for one of our main customers today. Apparently, this has been going on for a while. After finding out a little here and there, I managed to find a problem with one of our upstream providers. It took some convincing on their end, but they finally found a problem in their network. I was kinda pleased with that one.<br /><br />Oh yeah, someone at the office wants to do something really stupid. In order to prevent that, I'm going to have to do quite a bit of work... (more later.)<br /><br />Paul fixed lasagna for dinner. (Frozen, but still good.) A short dog walk and I headed back down here to the house. (Needed to do some laundry.)<br /><br />BTW - Figured something out today - you have to clean out the exhaust port for the dryer. (I clean the lint trap every time I use it, the problem was the vent on the outside of the house.) The dryer smelled very hot (like solder.) Up to then, I didn't even think about it. So, I guess that's something to check out every couple of months? :)<br /><br />I also did the base install on a new box to replace pluto. I may not actually put it in place for a while yet. Right now, I've got too much to do at the office. (Wireless, project from today, a couple of other things from the office.. sigh.)<br /><br /><br />That's about it.. it's bedtime. (Had to catch up though.)<br /><br /><br />Hum.. Real quick - Number 6 - "I am growing intellectually." I was going to go back to IUPUI and get my bachelor's degree, but got sidetracked by IQ. I need to go back there, and finish it up. Besides that, I'm not putting as much effort into figuring things out lately. I haven't had any really fun projects to sink my teeth into and learn about. (Wireless has been alot of fun, and I've learned a lot from it. That covers the last couple of weeks or so, but that doesn't cover the last couple of years.) So, at some point.. it's back to IUPUI.