Long Ride Today

I have just taken my longest motorcycle ride yet. Laura and I went over to my parents’ house and swapped out the truck for the bike. We then rode on small roads back to our house on the bike… it was quite a long ride, over 30 miles, but very nice. It was supposed to rain today, but it seems to have burned off. In fact, it was quite warm while riding the bike today. It took a long time to drive that 30+ miles… It took over an hour to get home, but that’s because we went slow – always good to go slow on a bike.

Now, the garage looks roomy – quite spacious, actually. The truck took up a lot of space…

Weather Delay?

On the way to pick up may dad’s bike from his house for a couple of weeks, I ran into some rain. Yikes! So, I’m sitting at my parents’ house waiting for a while while the rain passes over and hoping the sun comes out soon to dry the pavement. Otherwise, I’ll have to put this off for another day. I guess I’ll wait a bit more and see if things clear up.

Goal: Achieved

Now we’ve done it. We’ve gone and gotten licensed. Both Laura and I have passed all of our tests; fulfilled all of our requirements. We’re now fully-licensed motorcycle drivers. Class CM. It’s cool. It rocks. I think that in a couple of days, I’m going to go trade in the truck for the bike. [For those who don’t know, I’m keeping my dad’s truck while he’s in Russia – now, I’ll keep his bike around instead!] Of coruse, I will have to take the bike back when I have to go to the airport – can’t carry much luggage on a bike!

Two Wheels Continued…

Both Laura and I have successfully passed our Motorcycle Safety Training Course. That means we will both be soon licensed to drive the bike on public roads. Watch out! If you see a Honda Shadow Sabre with an orange flame tank out on the roads, please be nice!

I will say that the course has magnified my riding skills at least 10-fold. All that low speed maneuvering practice comes in real handy. Not to mention those bikes, though smaller, were harder to operate than my dad’s machine. So, when I tried it out after only a half day’s worth of practice, it felt so much easier to control. Didn’t quite feel like the huge beast I thought it was. I highly recommend this course to anyone who hasn’t taken it – whether they have a bike or not!

Next, we go to get our licenses! Stay tuned for more news…

Driving On Two Wheels

2012-01-08 23:28:56

Today dawns the day when Laura and I expand our vehicular repertoire – to motorcyles. We are both taking the Motorcycle Safety course and will be getting our licenses next week. Soon, we will be able to legally drive the bike. Maybe we’ll go on some short road trips – visit friends in Austin or other nearby cities.

It’s odd: this is really the first item of news posted here in a long time that doesn’t have to do with my job or this web site’s technical dificulties. I guess that evil project [Yeah! I’m done!] stressed me out so much that it was all that I could really think about.

I don’t know what the future holds, but I know that I’m hoping I’ll have one maybe two weeks of bench time so that I can do some of the long-neglected tasks around the house that I have piling up, as well as doing some studying after this class is done to pass the associated test. Then, who knows where I’ll be? Not me! [as usual]

I’m Back…

As you can see, the web site is back online today. After much painful and exhaustive work on my part, the site is back up. There is still more work I need to do, but I think the main problems have been solved or at least diagnosed. The rest of the problems don’t center around the web site but on my LAN… so I won’t bore you.

Anyway: it’s good to be back. Enjoy the site!

Networking

I have been told that I may now persue Cisco certification. I will begin with the CCNA program – that’s the ground level for Cisco. My goal will be to obtain CCIE but that might take years since it’s not my core job function to work with the switches and routers. So – it’s book study for me here…

Training Now…

Okay. Maybe I rushed to judgement about my company not springing for training. I am in class right now for Exchange Server 2003. I can hardly believe my fortune, but I guess they feel I need training. Of course, it’s not the course they originally wanted for me, but it’s one that’s probably more important and marketable. In fact, it’s on track for me and my personal plan for skills growth. And, it happens to be local. Now I can be home and be working as well.

Once this training is done, I’ll probably take the exam that goes along with it and try to get trained on the design aspects of Exchange. It would be great to be able to get on a project where these skills are utilized… that’s my next target.

Internet Lifeline

2012-01-08 23:28:56

Sometimes the phone company does things you do not wish it to do. Like, for instance, what they have done to me. When I first moved here, I was able to get good internet service in a variety of fashions: DSL, cable modem, whatever… Since then, however, the phone company has done … ‘something’ … to my line. I am utilizing DSL as my hosting mechanism for this site and to connect to my work while I’m working from home. Unfortunately, that ‘something’ that the phone company has done has increased my line lenght so far as to make it unsupportable. So, I can only get slightly better than modem speeds – not for uplink, mind you – the site will go just as fast as it always has over the internet. But for me, working – if someone sends me a large file, it will take a LONG time to download it.

Not only that, I’m sure that if you have visited my site in the last couple of weeks, more than likely it has been unavailable. Yep. Bad link.

So – I am at a crossroads: do I cancel the DSL, try another service, try cable modem again [it works great, but is more expensive for fixed IP hosting], or try an alternate method like fixed wireless? Unfortunately, I can’t seem to find a fixed wireless provider in my area, so I will have to tough it out with the tech support people until they tell me it’s not feasable and then I’ll probably call the cable company… again…

As you can see, it’s been a fun couple of weeks trying to straighten this out. And more work is yet to be done!