Beer Goggle Dreams

So many things afoot at our household. That and work is why I haven't been posting.

Work itself seems to be going well but busy. Looking forward to several things including another visit from my friend from Tokyo among other things.

Mundania abounds it seems. Had to move my boat into the driveway today as I got a letter from the city saying it had to be off the grass. Thankfully we have the space to do that. I talked to the inspector and she said that as long as it's on a hard surface that the grass can't grow through it is acceptable. So seeing as I'm going to go with raised beds anyways that means I can put down landscape fabric and patio stones behind the garage and store it back there. Will also likely winterize and store the bike back there as well once I'me finished working with it. Need to call her back and confirm my suspicions that a pole and fabric structure is not considered permanent. If that's the case then I'll put up one of those temporary tent style garages back there and that will keep the weather off the boat and bike and I won't have to get expensive covers for them.

Speaking of money have to spend more of it on the Neon as it is required to have an emissions test in January. Kind of annoyed by that as they sent out a letter a couple of years ago that they will not be testing anything older than 2000 and Dorothy is a 1998.

I should be out repairing the brake line on my truck but I'm sitting here listening to a jiggle canner. Today's canning is three quarts of chili without beans, two quarts of water, and two experimental quarts of unsweetened green tea that I cold brewed. Not sure how that last one is going to come out but if it works then I can make and store up green tea indefinitely and save myself a lot of time. (I drink a LOT of green tea daily.)

Finally got us switched over to Comcast Business Class for our Internet. All the servers and DNS are all moved over and so far things seem to be working without issue. In our area at least Business Class and Residential use two different support groups so the experience is VERY different. And I'm paying what I was paying with the other DSL service and getting 15x more speed. And for those of you techies out there that run your own equipment they will put the router in Bridge Mode if I ask. :-)

Still no word on if the office is moving or not. Hopefully we'll find that out soon. The one lady at the office said that if they sell it likely means working completely at home for up to a year. I can easily work with that. With the upgraded connectivity and a Skype phone number I can forward my work line to it seems to function quite well. Some odd issues related to Skype but nothing I can't take care of.

All that aside I'm going to focus on getting at least the basics resolved in the basement and move my computer space down there. That way I don't have to heat the workshop as much during winter. (We used 1300 therms last February) Unfortunately I don't think I'm going to be able to get the large computer rack down there without altering the door. I may have to just build one in the corner. I've got another rack that might fit but it has no sides and is about twice the weight. Time will tell. Cleaning up any moisture and electrical issues down there come first though.

Things I've been reading....some of it is fanfic from MLP:FIM circles but two books I read and loved were the Order of the Air books by Melissa Scott. Well worth reading. Also just bought and started War Maid's Own by David Weber. We'll see how that one pans out. I'd like to read more Seanan McGuire stuff but I'm so far behind it isn't funny. The last book I read by her was A Local Habitation. I just can't afford to pick them up right now. Hopefully I'll be able to pick a couple of her books up by Yule.

Money seems to be getting a little better but I'm not going to focus on that. I'll just keep holding back on most of the spending and keep moving forward. Patio stones and exhaust parts for Dorothy are high on the list of next things to buy. Just keep plugging away at it...

Anyways I'm going to go back to listening to the canner jiggle and I promise I will try and post more often. :-)

So my friends and I went camping this last weekend and while it was colder than we've ever had on a Memorial Day weekend camping trip it was fun just to hang out and relax.

That said coming back to work on Tuesday was brutal. Tons of stuff to do and compensating for other people still taking time off made it particular challenging but I got through it. And I'll continue to get through it. Just the way I am. Could use slightly more leisure time but so can everybody else.

A friend has so far gifted me three different Steam games that I've only played a little of each. I really would like to spend a whole day playing games but that's unlikely to happen. Anyways all of them play well on my work laptop which has awesome Nvidia graphics in it to the point where the rendering of Bioshock Infinite looks just like the trailers. (The desktop gaming machine does full speed rendering but the graphics card has some angular mesh to it when playing that game. *shrug* Still a beautiful game regardless.) And both systems render XCOM just fine. The problem as usual is time.

Didn't get any writing done while camping like I wanted. I did manage to absorb a few more stories from my Kindle. Even with the case that has the LED light in it running for several hours it hardly touched the battery. And it's not even close to full yet and Amazon has plenty of free book offers from time to time so unless I want to read something in particular I'm not really spending any money there.

Dorothy is not quite fixed. The caliper has been replaced but I'm still experiencing symptoms. (Yes Mashblock the hoses are next. :-) You'll be happy to know a mechanic friend of mine also suggested the same.) I'll see if I can't squeeze one or two of those into this check but right now I'm very focused on getting bills beaten back to some reasonable level. (Medical bills suck.)

Making my own iced tea bottles to take to work. Both sweet and not. I have plenty of plastic bottles free since I am not set up for brewing yet so I'm able to use those. Cold brewing them with a teabag in each overnight seems to work quite well. And is fantastically cheaper. So there's a win there. :-)

Not running in the Urban Warrior Dash. None of us from the office can make it that weekend as there's a work related thing going on for one of our customers. Thankfully because of that we can expense the fee out. Hopefully we can get into the regular one in August but we're also looking at alternate courses. Turns out there's quite a lot of them.

Time to try and get some sleep now...

11:31 AM 02/22/2012

So the new job has kept me busy busy busy. The only reason I've got a chance to post right now is I had to take the morning off because my daughter got sick on the bus this morning and that means she can't be in school according to the rules.

She's sleeping quietly on the couch now and will likely be fine tomorrow. (I just woke up from a preemptive nap myself. I've been running a little stretched lately and definitely was able to use the extra sleep. That will get cleared up here soon enough as things at work are going well and I will be doing a little more dispatch and scheduling and a little less technical work. The two are supposed to be mutually exclusive and the former definitely doesn't happen as much after-hours as the latter.

In other news I reclaimed a laptop from a co-worker that had a bad motherboard. It almost wasn't worth repairing but my neighbors had me order a replacement motherboard for their laptop and I got a deal and was able to get the board for this one as well. Now all it needs is a new battery. It's a Dell Inspiron E1505, 15" Core2Duo, 2gig ram, and it was able to just up and run with my existing SSD installed with Mint 11 Linux on it. That laptop can also be upgraded to a 2.35 Ghz chip pretty cheaply but even with the old 1.6ghz and the SSD it just seems to fly. Faster than the 2.16 ghz C2D of the same year. Very strange.

Managed to get the garage connected with the house via gigabit ethernet cable. It's not pretty because I have blue Cat5E strung arially from the house to it but it works thankfully. With time and money this spring I'll get the yard trenched and a pipe put in between the two places and that'll be a great improvement. In the meantime if I find a cheap price on fiber and gbic connectors that arial cable may turn from blue to orange. What I'm most worried about with that is local lightning. If something hits close it will easily induce a current in that wire and probably kill the two switches at either end. Then I'd have to buy gigabit switches as well.

As for other things our daughter is gettng more used to not getting her way but it's still the typical teenagerism. Went to play Mahjonng at a friend's house and half the time she kept asking us if we were ready to go. That didn't work so she was a little perturbed but she didn't have a full scale meltdown so that's good.

Slightly irritated that I haven't started any seedlings yet. I've been so busy with work that I may have to just order starter plants this year. I _WILL_ have a garden this year dammit. Still really itching to have some sort of hydroponics setup but until I get other inside things taken care of that's not happening.

We're getting almost three grand back from the taxes this year (even some from the state) and while a chunk of that has to go to the mortgage this month some of that is definitely going into house repairs. Maybe I'll finally be able to buy the bags of concrete I need to fill that hole in the basement wall and start finishing out that space. That would be awesome.

Well my daughter is up and showing signs (and sounds...ugh) of still not feeling well. It's probably just the 24 hour thing my wife had the other night so I'm not too concerned. And my wife just arrived with food so I gotta go so I can get back to work. Later!

15:06 PM 10/09/2011

So this public post is to inform all concerned among family and friends that I'm currently not working again. I will not go into details but likely something will come along soon. With the feedback I got from my previous client my recruiters will have NO problem finding another position for me. I told them for now that I just want to take short jobs again for a while. (I really really liked that last position. :-( It'll take me a while to recover from that.)
( We're OKAY. )

11:20 AM 06/23/2011

Done with work for the week. Applied to three more jobs this morning. Only one of them got back to me and that was only to tell me I didn't qualify for the position due to FAA requirements. No big.

I start another temp job on Monday that should last at least a couple of days. Turns out it's right across from Fry's. Dangerous because I really really want RAM for the Ubuntu desktop as well as a number of other tech items. Have to try not to go across the street when I'm done for the day. ;-)
( Those...eyebrows... )

07:13 AM 05/24/2011

Just a quick note to keep away the bankrupt pants...

On the last day of the temporary job through a recruiter. Not too bad. I'm hoping to get more jobs through them because they're a large firm and I've said I'll happily work short jobs as long as they keep them coming.

They've said that they get a lot of calls for short jobs where the client only wants someone to hang around a few days or a week and honeslty I'm okay with that. I kind of like the idea of doing a different job every time or so. Keeps it from being boring.

It's not 40 hours at the moment but I'm hoping it doesn't screw my unemployment. Thankfully there's a couple more contract jobs coming up very soon. Anything I can do to fill the pipe. And honestly if the jobs are interesting or even just temporary but boring I don't mind putting in a lot of hours. Being hourly rocks so much more than being salary.

In the meantime I've been experimenting with Sculpey clay for making odd trinkets and jewelry. It's pretty cool stuff but I wish I could find a clearcoat that doesn't smell. The one I have now looks like it has to outgas for a week or more before it doesn't smell like bad plastic.

I'd love to find a natural clay material that doesn't require a kiln and isn't "playdough" but there doesn't seem to be one. I wonder if my friend still has her kiln and wants to get rid of it...

Still wishing for a RepRap (3D printer) but those cost a good grand if bought complete so it's definitely out of my price range right now. Hopefully I can piecemeal one together as more money becomes available.