I’m about to embark on my first major home improvement project. I’ve gotten several estimates and decided to go with the contractor from the local Home Depot store.

The one thing about our house that we never reallly liked was that it does not have a fenced-in backyard. It hasn’t really been that big of a deal, but we got a Yellow Lab puppy earlier this year named Winston and he’s going to be way too big to try to keep in the house without someplace to run off his energy. The picture below was taken a few months ago. He now weighs 36 lbs and the vets says he will grow a pound a day until he’s about 8 months old.

The biggest obstacle to putting a fence around the backyard is because the driveway goes up the side of the house, curls around the length of the back of the house and goes straight into the garage (see photo above taken from the front of the house). That means that any fence we put up is going to require a gate across the driveway with some sort of automatic opener.

Tags: fence, project, puppy, house, home improvement

» Continue reading “My fence project”

Tonight we attended a “Friends of the Library” sale where you can pick up books for hideously low prices (like $1 for hardbacks and $.50 for paperbacks). We really went for the kids, but I managed to pick up a few gems myself:

• Java Developer’s Guide (1996) – Why not? I’ve been meaning to learn more about Java (get away from that nasty PHP habit) and what’s changed in the past 10 years I can pickup from any number of places on the web.
• being digital (1995) by Nicholas Negroponte – Looked intersesting. A bit out of date, but it might be interesting to see what the author predicted and what actually happened.
• The Best of Thrillers – a 10 CD audio book collection of four novels
• • The Weatherman by Steve Thayer
  • The Hunt for Red October by Tom Clancy
  • All Fall Down by Lee Gruenfeld
  • Nine Levels Down by William R. Dantz

On top of that, I received notification that the 10th book of the Sword of the Truth series by Terry Goodkind, called Phantom, had been released as an Unabridged MP3 CD . So, tonight I placed order from audiobooksonline.com. It will fit on my iPod perfectly just like the last book, Chainfire.

I usually read quite a lot (at one point in college I was going through a paperback novel every weekend), but with podcasts, gaming, school, work, and family I’ve lost touch with it over the past few years. I’ve decided to establish a reading queue which really consists of taking books I’ve purchased or received as gifts over the past few years off of the bookshelf and stacking them where I see them to remind me that I need to get reading. In addition to what I picked up tonight, I also have on the list:

• All Tomorrow’s Parties by William Gibson
• Dark Tower V: Wolves of the Calla by Stephen King
• Cybergrace:The Search for God in the Digital World by Jennifer Cobb

I still think Audiobooks, especially ones that comes as MP3 format already, are the wave of the future. Between podiobooks.com and audiobooks I already have, it’s going to tough to choose how to split my time between them. It’s just not convenient to take a novel to work and read on my lunch hour because I eat at my desk and people think I’m slacking (I’ve gotten in trouble for this). Music players are allowed and I’m never questioned what I’m listening to. At the same time, if I try to curl up on the couch and listen to an audiobook, I’m asleep within 30 minutes.

To be complete, my audiobook queue (in addition to the ones I picked up tonight) is:

• Infection by Scott Sigler (podcast)
• 7th Son by J.C. Hutchins (podcast)
• Morevi: The Chronicles of Rafe and Askana by Tee Morris and Lisa Lee (podiobooks.com)
• Spherical Tomi: A Novel of Despair by Jack Mangan (podiobooks.com)
• The Book of Mormon (ldsaudio.com)
• The Accidental Terrorist by William Shunn (podcast)

I will post a list of all of the podcasts that I listen to somewhere, most likely on the sidebar somewhere.

Tags: friends of the library, java, being digital, the weatherman, the hunt for red october, all fall down, ninelevels, sword of truth, terry goodkind, phanton, chainfire, audiobooksonline.com, ipod, apple, all tomorrow’s parties, william gibson, stephen kind, dark tower, cybergrace, infection, 7th son, morevi, spherical tomi, book of mormon, the accidental terrorist, william shunn, podcasts, podiobooks, ldsaudio.com

Last week I was chatting with a co-worker who happens to be one of our web developers and I made a reference to the Bastard Operator From Hell excuse calendar. He had no clue what I was talking about! How very sad, I had to explain exactly what he’s been missing out on. Seriously, I thought they checked BOFH knowledge in techical job interviews these days! **sheesh**

If you’re not hip to the ways of the BOFH, go get caught up.

Tags: bofh, bastard operator from hell, humor, excuse calendar

I finally got around to upgrading the podcast site, Bits of Silicon Hell,to WordPress 2.0. I’m shy about upgrading major versions of anything as soon as they come out. So, yeah, I let this one go for a while.

It was sorta fun upgrading all of my plugins, discovering new ones, and troubleshooting various issues arising from doing the geek/guy thing and not following the directions to the letter (such as not deleting the old version’s files).

I’m excited about the new version of the forums and support for gravatar (which I never heard of before tonight). The only thing on my wishlist is some way to know when forum replies are made. Either through e-mail notifications or an favorite thread RSS feed like BBpress has.

Next project: Find something to replace the outdated piece of crap called PHP-Nuke that’s currently running Eyejabber without losing any of the 5 years worth of posts, comments, and forum discussions. The site is not mine, but Dudemac is pretty clueless when it comes to this stuff so I hook him up. I just haven’t had time to do a proper job and the site’s only been defaced a couple of times.

Tags: Bits of Silicon Hell, Upgrade, WordPress, Plugins, Forum, RSS

Don’t forget that System Administrator Appreciation Day will be here soon. This year it’s on July 28th. As a recovering System Administrator, I encourage you to take a moment and tell a sysadmin that you appreciate what they do.

Tags: Sysadmin Appreciation Day, System Administration

Note: I’ve reposted this several times, which seems odd because it came from one of those chain letter e-mails my family is always sending me. Either way, it’s still profound stuff.

Five (5) lessons to make you think about the way we treat people.

1. – First Important Lesson – Cleaning Lady.

During my second month of college, our professor gave us a pop quiz. I was a conscientious student and had breezed through the questions until I read the last one:

“What is the first name of the woman who cleans the school?” Surely this was some kind of joke. I had seen the cleaning woman several times. She was tall, dark-haired and in her 50s, but how would I know her name?

I handed in my paper, leaving the last question blank. Just before class ended, one student asked if the last question would count toward our quiz grade.

“Absolutely,” said the professor. “In your careers, you will meet many people. All are significant. They deserve your attention and care, even if all you do is smile and say “hello.”

I’ve never forgotten that lesson. I also learned her name was Dorothy.

» Continue reading “The Way We Treat People”

Just last week I started a blog at Yahoo! 360 and already I’ve decided it isn’t what I’m looking for. I also have a blog attached to my Myspace profile page which I posted to a few times and let die. Why do I think this blog will be any different?

First of all, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking lately about the stories and information that exists only in people’s heads. I know there is information and stories about various people in my family that has been lost forever. Those that experienced those things are no longer in this world. I guess it’s just middle age creeping up on me, but I’ve started to ponder my own legacy.

What will my children know of my life and the experiences that I had? At this point, nothing. None of it is written down or recorded anywhere. Heck, I think I’m beginning to forget much of it myself. Of course, I’m too much of a geek to sit down and write it all out in an actual journal. On the other hand, what happens to this if I spend hundreds of hours recording my thoughts with the intent to preserve it? Will this blog be here in 20 years?

It’s too late to ponder those tough questions. I guess if I’m smart I’ll find a way to archive these posts to some sort of permanent medium. The only problem is, who’s going to have a way to read that medium. I dare you to find a zip drive to restore some files I backed up to a zip disk 10 years ago. I dare you.

Tags: blogging, Yahoo! 360, WordPress, stories, legacy

Test photo post from Flickr

, originally uploaded by cleikis.

This an easy way to moblog by emailing my photos to flickr from my Treo 650. This is a photo of my office and podcast studio at home. High Tech, isn’t it?

Tags: photo, flickr, testing