Category: Life News

Even More House Hunting

After a rather disappointing bout with a house we thought we could afford but when we ran the numbers found that we couldn’t, we’re back on the hunt for a new abode.

The REALLY disappointing thing is that the single family homes are so old and small for the price that we are now looking at more modern townhomes. These are a compromise since Laura wants a yard. More important for us, though, is good interior layout. We have yet to find one of the old houses’ floor plans that we like. Most would have to be redone at great expense for us to feel at home. Tiny bathrooms and falling-apart kitchens are two of the big let downs with these houses.

So, we’ve moved to townhouses. We’re going to look at a few today. Let’s hope we find something.

I’m Back!

I’m sure you noticed that the web server was down… or if you didn’t, you may have thought I was just being quiet. Not so! The web server’s host server crashed last week while we were in Seattle… not to return. I’ve been able to get it up and running temporarily, but I will be installing some new parts in the server to make it more reliable. Then, we’ll see how it works.

Work Upon Work

2012-01-08 23:30:26

It’s Saturday and our class is over for the day, but I’m still at the office. Why, you ask? Well, it’s like this: I’d like to do some work on our photo backlog [which is still very large, especially since we got our scans back from ScanCafe] and post some pictures to the site. However, doing that from the hotel room is very slow since their link is weak.

it’s much faster here at the office, so here is where I sit and upload pictures.

Of course, I don’t want to leave the building while they’re grading my exam. I’m pretty sure I passed, but I don’t want to leave in case I hear the good news!

So, I upload pictures and bite my nails while I wait…

A Glutton For Punishment

2012-01-08 23:30:26

I’m back out in Redmond today [actually, I flew out late Thursday night] so that I could re-take the certification test for the first half of the Directory Ranger program [which, I believe is going to be called “Microsoft Certified Master: Windows Server 2008 Advanced Infrastructure” or some such onerous title]. I think I passed it this time. Last time, I missed a certain topic because I was sick for the first half of the first week.

But, I didn’t just fly out for the test. I came EARLY for the test. I came out because I’m going to sit in the same room with mostly the same people and go through the second half of the program, which I’m told will be the Directory-specific portion of the program. I’m really looking forward to that.

So now I’m tired: tired of being in this room for 12 hours; tired of smelling whatever that smell is; and tired of looking at this screen. I’m just tired, too. I’m going now. I’ll be going back to the hotel and then to get some food.

And sleep… Especially sleep.

I miss Laura, too. 😦

When It Rains…

Now that the Fridge is fixed, what should break but the car?

Driving home, Laura noticed some strange problems like the radio/CD player cutting out and the AC shutting off. Worse things happened as the day wore on, so we took it in yesterday. I hope the damage is not too bad.

At least we get a loaner car. It’s rather nice. Ours is nicer, but they gave us a green 323i.

Dead Fridge and Virtualization

2012-01-08 23:30:25

This Sunday, while we had a visitor staying with us, our refrigerator [not really ours, per se – it comes with the house] died a slow, quiet death. We first noticed about lunch time when the ice seemed to be low and the cubes not as hard as usual. This was followed by a series of significant glances at each other and the mopping up of excess glacier melt in the kitchen over the next hour. Fortunately, our neighbors volunteered to host our frozen stash until such time as the box gets repaired. That supposedly happened today. I say supposedly since it takes time for the interior to get cold again.

I don’t think we lost much since we put most frozen things in our neighbors’ freezer and the cool items in coolers with ice. We’ll see soon, though.

In the mean time, I’ve decided to further virtualize my home network by migrating the web server over to a virtual machine. That’s right: you’re now reading this web page not on a physical server, but on a virtual one [actually, it’s possible you’re still reading this on the old server if you read this within 30 minutes of the post since I’m still running the conversion as I type]. This means that I will have virtualized 3 servers and been able to remove two whole boxes from my network. That’s more electricity saved – and more fun had doing it!

Now, I must return to the geekfest…

Softball

It’s that time of year again. We get to pretend like we are young and spry and play softball.

Today, we held our first practice and we are SORE! We went through some exercises yesterday for agility training, so our feet and legs are sore. But today, there was throwing and hitting so my shoulder and arms are sore.

Oh, yeah. I’m really not 18 anymore… ouch…

Changing Headlines

I’ve been told I should update the blog since we’ve been back from the trip to Florida for about a week.

The trip was good and while there, we got to experience some of that Gulf weather – a torrential rain storm broke in on Friday evening and there were enough dangerous winds at stops on our way back that our flights were delayed for over 2 hours. We were among the lucky ones. One girl we sat next to had been at the airport for over 12 hours longer than she planned. It was bad winds that kept the planes down.

As for work, well… there is none. Not right now. This whole week has been very slow – which helped me get some much needed rest and to spend some good quality time with Laura. That was very helpful since I’d been gone for about 3 weeks in a row. Next time, It won’t be so long.

On The Road – Again!

In the morning, Laura and I will be journeying to Florida where I will work and she will play. She’ll work a little on some photos for a customer, but mainly she’ll get to relax in the warm weather. I’ll get to work – did I mention that? After having just gotten back from Seattle for 3 weeks, I wasn’t about to leave her here by herself – I kinda like hangin’ out with her, you know?

This is actually going to be my first customer business trip with Microsoft. All of my previous travel has been for training only. I think that’s a pretty good record – almost 3 years without a customer trip. At IBM, it was reversed – I went years without working in Houston.

While I’m there, I’ll be able to visit my friend Jeremy and hang with him for a bit.

Maybe, with this trip, I’ll get up to Silver on Continental. I lost my status on March 1st – I am now a ‘nobody’… 😦 Oh, the misery – it was either Platinum or Family. Yeah: tough choice.