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Step Two: Departure [Also Known As: “The Fog”]

After a somewhat inconvenient flight to Houston and a very pleasant dinner with my father at a wonderful Mexican place, Laura and I wake up early the next morning to be shuttled to meet Norma, Laura’s mom, for breakfast and the remainder of the way to port.

That breakfast was to be the best we would have until arriving back at Norma’s place.

Arrival at the port went smoothly and easily. We met up with our friends and got quickly on board. What I hadn’t paid attention to, but should have, was the weather. It was foggy at my parents’ early that morning, but I had assumed it would dry up later in the day. It didn’t. In fact: it would grow worse.

Our departure was delayed – and delayed – and delayed, until we even slept hoping to awaken in the middle of the Gulf. In the morning, I rolled over to glance out over the beautiful … port of Galveston. I went back to sleep.

We finally started moving later that day. That fog delay caused us to miss one of our ports of call: Freeport, Bahamas. So instead of visiting Key West, Freeport, and Nassau, we had to go to Nassau first, skip Freeport and hit Key West last.

At least we had a good time in Nassau – and were able to leave the boat.

Step One: Arrival

Today, we flew from DC to Houston for the first stage of our journey. It wasn’t so simple as it sounds. For some reason, there was enough terrible weather that we had to land half-way there in Knoxville to re-fuel. A very strong headwind made the trip very slow and costly.

At least I an add a new airport to my list now.

Tomorrow, we drive down to Galveston and board the boat. I’ve never been on a cruise like this before – only river a river cruise and a ferry ride from Vancouver to Juneau, Alaska. Those were cruises, but not like this one: this is a CRUISE. Big boat and all.

We’ll be doing a bit of diving, a bit of photography, and a lot [I hope] of relaxing.

Almost Destroyed

Some of you may have noticed this morning when the blog was unavailable. As you can see, it’s back now and working properly. I guess that some of the “fixes” I put in place broke things over the weekend and I only now got it back up and running. It as almost completely lost. That would have been bad. At least I had a backup.

Anyway: all is well now with the world and the web server.

Enjoy!

New Web Server

I bet you didn’t even notice, but we’re now running on Windows Server 2008 R2, which is 64-bit only.

Yay!

This is has been an ongoing project which I started a while back when 2008 came out. I wanted to migrate all the sites from 2003 to 2008. I got bogged down and then R2 was release and I couldn’t just upgrade the new server, so I had to deploy a new one. Presently I have 3.

Soon, there will be only one.

There is still much work to be done, but it won’t be the onerous task I thought it would be… I hope…

New Backdrop

Yesterday, we received our first photographic backdrop. We’re fleshing out the studio and getting serious about taking more pictures. We’ve already done one shoot this month, but it was outside. Now, we can do good portraits inside. We even have another shoot scheduled for this weekend.

So, without further ado, here is a shot of our new backdrop:

Since we had it set up, we took some sample shots of my friend Raffe:

Now, we’re ready for business!

40

No, not the U2 song, but Friday, I turned 40. It’s an eye-opening experience and I frequently wonder where the time has gone. I mean: I don’t FEEL 40… except after I work out too hard.

This year, after saving up lots of money by selling off old books, I was given a gift card to make up the difference and purchase a Kindle! For those who don’t know, it’s an electronic book reader which will store tons of books and even automatically download new ones.

Here’s a card Laura put together for my birthday which shows a picture of the old generation one (and a little Photoshop manipulation):

So, it’s been ordered and I’m eagerly awaiting the new device. I’ve even queued up some free e-books to have them downloaded when I turn it on. Book like Jules Verne’s “Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea” and Doyle’s “The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes” are public domain now and free for downloading. If I were to just read those free books, I’d likely never finish before I turn 80…

But, I’m getting rid of my old paper books and going for the new, easier to store e-books.

Then, Laura can use my old, empty shelves like she wants…

Server Room: Complete

Upon arrival back from our trip to Houston, it was good to arrive back at the house to see that our basement work was complete. The wall was done and painted, the wall trim installed, and the door put in place.

It looks like it was always there. Here are some pictures of the inside:

So, I’m pretty excited about the room. Tonight, I’ll be moving the servers into the room, so the site will be down for a bit.

More Home Improvements

This week, we’ll be modifying our basement. We’ll be walling in a nook to contain all my servers and networking equipment. It’s the latest phase of getting our basement set up for photography. This will allow us to move all the excess computer equipment out of the main basement area into a closed room. In this room will also be some shelving for storing other unsightly materials. Here is a pictures of the nook [after we moved all the servers away from it]:

Previously, there was a desk [and then a table] holding printer, monitor, CD filing units on top and computer part holders and a server or two beneath it. It was quite messy.

Over the next few days, there may be some few outages as we move wiring and other things around to accommodate the new space.

Not that I’ve been posting anything recently… I know: I’m a slacker.

Vonage Foibles

For the last 4 years or so, just after we moved to Virginia, we got Vonage as our home phone. We replaced the Verizon line once we got reliable high speed Internet at the house.

However, over the last month or so, we’ve been unable to see our caller ID due to the “check phone line” being displayed on our handsets. This is very annoying. I mean: how can we avoid talking to you if we don’t know it’s you that’s calling? Seriously!

When we originally got Vonage, I got two phone lines and that mean two adapters. Now, you can do two lines through one adapter, but for some reason, they had me buy two adapters. I found out I really didn’t need that second phone line for fax, that I could just use the number they gave me at work, so I cancelled the second line. Still had the box though.

Since the “check phone line” is annoying and the phone wouldn’t even tell us when we had voicemail, I thought I’d see if the old Motorola box was bad. I put the rarely used Linksys box on the network, did a “move line” from the Vonage web page to the new (old) Linksys box, and Voila! Phones are now working as desired.

Motorola box is now on its way to a landfill.

Even More Cleaning

Now that we’ve shredded most of the documents [after having to wait for the shredder to cool down between bouts] we’ve been working on streamlining our bookcases. I’ve been looking at the Kindle and will now likely buy one. That decision made, I’ve started to clean off my shelves of books that, if I read again, it will be digitally. Some I will not read again, but to know that they are available on the Kindle is enough for me to get rid of them.

Some I will keep never to sell, of course, but that is not what this post is about.

I have a couple of crates of books sitting beside me now: books to sell or otherwise get rid of. I am going to try Craigslist now.

Craigslist has become our friend lately. We’ve sold lots of stuff, including Laura’s old behemoth of a computer desk. That will definitely clear up some space in our basement for a photography studio.

And now, I’m off to type up some Craigslist posts.