Tuesday, October 31, 2006

UGHHH

It all makes sense now.... Mercury is in retrograde again. It started on Saturday and won't end until Dec 4. AGHHHH!

Monday, October 30, 2006

DC - Day 2

Well training went well today. Afterwards I went to the Washington Monument only to find out that tickets are only available until 4:30 and it closes at 5:00 which means that I won't have an opportunity to go up the monument this time around. Maybe I'll have a chance to do it in December when I come back for the next training.

Since the monument was closed I went and saw the WWII memorial and then the Lincoln memorial. They were both breathtaking. It was the first time that I had seen the WWII memorial, and I have to say it is quite powerful.

All-in-all, a good day.

Sunday, October 29, 2006

Off to DC - Day 1

Well, I made it to DC safe and sound. It's been a bit of an ordeal througout the whole process thus far. First off, the limo service van came about 20 minutes early so I was still taking care of last minute things so it took a few minutes for me to get down to the van, and to top it all off I got a call from the dispatcher for the limo service telling me that she "needed to get the driver out of there", aka I needed to hurry up. Thankfully at that point I was climbing into the van, otherwise I would have given her a piece of my mind for getting there outside of the appointed time and then expecting me to be instantly accomodating to their changes.

Getting into the air was pretty rough with all of the wind gusting about off the water. It sucked because normally I love take-offs. This one I was tense the entire time. Not the most auspicious of beginnins. The rest of the flight went fairly well and the landing at Dulles was passable.

After this I take a bus to the Metro and then walk the block to the hotel. This was a bit of a pain since I had no idea where Pennsylvania Ave was from the train station and then I ended up going the wrong way. After getting turned around a few times I finally got the hotel. I have to say the room is nice. I went to get setup on the internet only to realize I had no ethernet cable. I packed EVERYTHING else I could need and I guess I just assumed they'd be doing wireless. Whoops! Well thankfully the front desk had an ethernet cable I could use. I then plugged in and got ready to check my e-mail etc and then... nothing. All I could get was a 169.*.*.* address, so I called the Front Desk, who told me to call the support company.

I called the support company and they walked me through about 5 tests I had already donen and then asked me to manually set the link speed to test that as well. Those tests all failed. At that point I exhasted the options at that level of support and I was told that they had to kick it up to Tier 3 so they could look at the network configuration of the Hote. I was told I should be contacted in about 30 minutes. 45 minutes later I called again and was told the SLA was 2 hours and that no one should have told me 30. I thanked the phone tech and waited for the rest of the 2 hour time period. 2 hours comes and goes so I call back. This time they kick me directly to Tier 3 and I get someone who walks me through additional steps, most I've already checked and still no success. At one point he has me empty my temporary internet files, which makes no sense at this point. I could understand if I had an IP and couldn't get to their internet provisioning server but at this point I still didn't have an IP. Finally he restarts the switch and voila, internet. The only good thing is that the entire time I was doing this I was sitting in my nice comfy hotel provided aeron chair.

So at this point I'm off to bed so I can get up for breakfast and training tomorrow. Lets hope things go smoother tomorrow.

Thursday, October 26, 2006

Que Syrah Syrah

Had a lovely glass or two of Syrah wine this evening. As I've recently found it apparently Syrah and Shiraz are the same grape. I've also found out that's not to confuse them with being the same wine. Shiraz is typically the Australian varietal and is usually more of a modern sharp crisp taste, while the Syrah is usually the European varietal and is often a more rounded old world style flavor. All in all a very nice addition to my collection of wines that I like.

I changed around the setup of my living room last weekend for my the housewarming for my Mom's side of the family. I have to say I'm very happy with it. It definitely opens up the room a lot more. Amazing how switching around furniture, even just a few pieces can really change a place up.

So next week I head out to DC to do training for Blackboard (for the WPI kids reading its the software behind myWPI). Should be fun, haven't been traveling in a while.

Monday, October 23, 2006

MIA

So yeah, I've been missing in action on the blog front. I've been so very busy lately, and while part of me hates to be so "go, go, go" all the time, anther part of me knows that I go nuts when all of a sudden I stop and bam, I've got nothing to do, nothing planned, nothing scheduled. I've found I thrive on having my life planned out weeks to months in advance. I've gotten to the point where I find it hard to be spontaneous, partly my own doing and partly because if I wanted to be spontaneous, all the people I'd want to be spontaneous with are busy with other things because I didn't schedule things in advance. *sigh* heh

Part of why I haven't blogged in a while is decompressing after Sweeney and adjusting to new job responsibilities. After such an intense schedule for Sweeney there was a lot of things in my life that I had neglected that needed catching up on. Additionally I've come into new responsibilities at the office.

One of the server administrators left to go to another institution and since I was in the process of becoming the backup administrator for the online course management software that we run at WPI, I ended up by default as the most knowlegable person on the systems. Now, don't get me wrong, I am happy to have gotten more responsibility and am looking forward to the challenges but its very stressful to suddenly be dropped into a position that you know very little about and have to run with it. The good news is that I'm flying down to DC for training next week and that should alleviate some of the feeling of flying blind.

Another reason for lack of posts is not for lack of things to write about. In fact there have been several times I've thought of posting something. The problem is that every time I got to that point the mental filter went through its checklist and vetoed the post. When I started out this blog I swore that I would do my best to not use this as some sort of passive/agressive method of complaining about issues that I wouldn't do otherwise. I have a few key things that I use as checks and balances on my posts. If the answer to the question is no, then I don't post.
  • If I'm complaining about something, have I dealt with the issue directly yet?
  • If I talk about someone in particular, would I say the same to their face?
  • Would I be comfortable if a person involved read the post?
  • Would I be comfortable if my mother read the post? (very appropriate since she and my aunts do, in fact, read my blog)

When I hit those areas I either deal with it and then post or talk to a friend (or several friends) directly about it and don't post. Also for those things where I just want to write it out I'll usually just write it in my diary.

Finally, it all comes down to an excerpt of Netwon's First Law (yes I'm a geek) which states "An object at rest tends to stay at rest...". What this essentially means is that the longer it is between posts, the larger the effort it is to post again. Hopefully that means that now that I've begun posting again I'll keep it up.