I had a fun weekend, and found some fun things, but might not of gotten all the sleep I needed - in the end though I think it was fun, good food - family, friends, a nice mix all around, missed Church tonight (Sorry Scott!) but it was for a family gather, in which we had some wonderful homemade Chinese food - quite delicious.
But this weekend posed the question “Apartment?” and I think the answer is quite simply “Yes” - I love my parents, and I love giving them fancy things like Cable, Internet, Cash, and Food, but they have both made it clear over the last month or two, that they don’t want to hold me back - to make me feel like I MUST be there to take care of them, so moving out isn’t so bad, plus I am more or less in the area still, as my apartment is only a mere 3 miles away (Bike Riding Distance!) so still nearby if needed, but my own place to relax, set rules, have wild parties (Note: Wild Parties = Food and Video Games lately) - but it could be fun.
The plan is to sleep on it tonight, pray it up real good, but unless someone comes to me with a $800/m house for rent, or some reason I SHOULD NOT move, I think I am going to push forward and have my move-in date be Friday, not a big rush, but I imagine it would give me time to slowly move in over the weekend, and maybe take Monday-Wednesday off to setup, and be around for things like PG&E, Cable Install, etc. and get all setup and fancy - but again, one step at a time, trying not to plan my life for this next week, as I know it’s gonna get busy.
Anywhoo - it’s getting close to that time, and morning is going to come early, tomorrow should be interesting, need to finish the newsletter for work, and I am sure a slew of other projects will follow, hopefully that of new firewall installed etc. but time will tell. I do appreciate all the prayers from you all, much appreciated indeed - I’ll keep you all posted, for now though I will say “Good Night!” and have a great week!
Well it’s been 6 months since I looked at apartments, I have also had 6 months of a job, and a minor raise since then (the raise @ 90 days) but I went again to my favorite Shadow Ridge, didn’t get any photos, thought about it, but I like it, they showed me the 2bed, 2bath 1 car garage ones, $895 a month, but nifty to have a garage, but on the flip side, they did show me the same 2bed 1 bath for $750 a month, and it’s nice, very roomy, upstaris - so a nice workout to and from the car 
I like the idea of living on my own again, and I do realize that it also means that I’ll have a lot more in expenses each month, but the ULTRA cool thing with the place, they are having a special 1/2 off the first FULL month’s rent, so pro-rated first month, 1/2 off the next month - so some time for the budget to re-coup - and on top of that since it’s all part of the up-front, I’ll be paid up in rent till October, so very nice indeed.
A lot of perks, not as fun to live alone always, but I think lately I’ve been hiding out since I get home, not that I am bugged by my parents, but just a lot on the mind lately, so many odd things happening lately with work and such, I just find I come home, work a bit, then sleep.
Anywhoo - just posting to ask for folks to keep me lifted up in prayer, really looking at this option seriously, seems like it could be a good fit, but I am going to poke around Sunday’s paper, and see if maybe there are any other offers I should explore before jumping into this one quickly, nothing says I HAVE to move out, but I think it might be time. Thanks for the prayers and have a lovely Saturday!
Well the night has come, Unicron-Classic (lol) is being shutdown as I type. It was a good server, lasted longer than I thought it would, even if it did cause me great grief this past weekend locking up, running out of ram, etc. but the customers of that server (not mine) are now re-located to 2 masterful 8-Core systems - and doing great on lovely RAID10 drive setups, so a nice improvement for those folks, I am sure there are some little bugs waiting for me here and there, but all in all, very very happy!
In other news! My parts showed up today, as I have been working here, I have been trying out the new thumbdrive which is for a combo of personal and a combo of work, 16GB of thumbdrive wonderfulness - so very happy, and every little bit I have been putting together the system, and it’s going well - but I’ll post more later, a few things to sort out in here, and waiting on the final on the old server, etc. etc. but tonight I’ll have a few things to post about… more soon!
A good day of progress, got things rolling with the data @ work, took only finding out the key to exporting the data from old txt files, now its fully 100% in MySQL ready to be abused, the other method was becoming pointless as it took SOOO long to convert from xBase -> MySQL (as the format was hinky, tools were fine, older xBase bunk) - so now I have data, and have begun writing some basic apps - nothing major, but key functions that will help build all apps.
The day really wrapped up with a trip to the Poon’s for dinner, had some amazing chats, tasty dip and desert, it was a good night indeed - talked about recent happenings, and it was nice to have a ear on things, the Poons have always been there for me, and are a tremendous blessing to me! So I had a great night indeed.
I got here and checked my order, parts are in-motion! So should have the case tomorrow, and the remainder (aka everything else) Monday - but it should be a nice rig, the BluRay I need to find a movie to pickup to use as a tester, if anyone has a suggestion, do let me know!
Anywhoo - Friday is nearly here, have a server migration tomorrow but it should be pretty straight forward I hope and pray - new servers looking good, and things are going to all work out - right now some odd things happening, and again I just ask for your continued prayers, I’d share more, but I want things to not be inflated here, and I think prayer is the best thing for the entire thing right now, and with that I will say Good Night, and hit the hay! Happy Friday!
Well a busy day, some massive progress, and some good fun - I got home and signed up for Remember the Milk (RTM) a online to-do list, but very well done, good iPhone interface, lots of good resources - I enjoyed it indeed, so very happy about that - my iPhone just got a tad more useful.
Flickr is doing their yearly 24 hours of flickr, I tried last year, but really didn’t get much going, this time however, I am all over it, might even take the 35mm to work with a tripod, and just go nuts
But for now I am going to find my sandals, and head to the store to get supplies, and cook up tomorrow’s dinner - should be very tasty - having dinner with my good friends the Poon’s - I am bringing the fine dinner (Bean Dip! Woot!) and they were stuck with the daunting task of the proper Chip to grace the beandip, I’ll be honest, I am hoping Dan goes for White Corn, but I am okay with Yellow Corn if they are there 
Anywhoo - I am off, wish me luck, and by Monday I should have all my parts for my computer! (YAY!) and have things re-organized, and hopefully some initial conversations about moving with the apartment complex I like… busy busy. More Soon!
Well today I got the call from the boss man back east, chatted about the meeting they had yesterday, got the skinny on everything - and I mean EVERYTHING, I think there were some concerns which could of been generalized, but straight out I now know how everyone in admin thinks - but a lot of it truly as he said it “perceptions” folks don’t ask me what I am doing, what I am working on, they just assume standing somewhere other than in my office means “playing around”. I am not going to lie, there are times I have had a friendly chat, but simple, quick, casual - not unheard of in an office.
But we discussed quite a bit, not the 2hr conversation from last week, but a hour long conversation which actually taught me some more of the inner workings of their system, as I really didn’t ever have much training on things - so got the skinny on working out some possible new functionality, and getting things up to par with the reports they used to have generated - which no longer work for me - got a budget of $500, got things sorted with “Personal” vs “Work” and also clarified my laptop use here at work, as it was questioned “Why” was I using it all the time, well it was part of the original agreement to allow me to keep my own business, because honestly if all I was making was the money from here? I’d be on one tight budget - but in conjunction with my business, it ain’t too shabby.
So things are mellowing out, and I imagine they will continue to do so, worked some on their “newsletter” and it is starting to look good I think, I am going to layout some things in Illustrator to import for the back page, but it should come out pretty nice and really allow them to have a product sent out that folks actually READ for once, good stories, eyecatching promos, etc. So I hope it will be well received, and if at all possible ready to go by this Friday.
Anywhoo - long day ahead, going to be sorting more of the programming they have in FoxPro, and see if I can better export these data dumps to Excel and maybe into Access or MySQL, and go from there, just need a clean customer list, and a clean OE file - but if I can do that, I can write a PHP app to import the data from the dumps, and a PHP app or two to generate the reports, so busy busy. Thanks for the continued prayers, I’ll post more on the event last night later, still quiet, but who knows if that’s good or bad. Time will tell.
So today I figured I’d be pulled into the morning meeting to discuss things, which I figured could possibly lead to a few things like me leaving this job, while not the “greatest” thing that could happen in the world, at some level it’d be easier on my brain lol - but nothing happened, not fired, no updated draft of my job description, as always less and less respect for someone who’s supposed to be in charge of a company’s IT infrastructure (I think).
But the day goes on, I have held off on my media rig until things settle down here, which they may well do - but time will indeed tell, but I figure if I haven’t heard anything about the job by tomorrow, I’ll go ahead and get the parts coming, and look more serisouly towards getting an appartment - I have scaled the rig down some to save money, and simply recycle some parts, namely Memory, TV Tuner, and Vista, so under $1000 for a system, but still should be a nice setup for the time being, and as things continue to settle down, might get something more to add-in down the line, but for now it’ll do.
Big thanks for all the prayers - I am hoping things continue to pan out here, it’s not that it’s a bad job - its just they keep trying to expand it where if I am not careful, I’ll be moping and vaccuming floors soon, and while I know how to do that, it’s not my job, nor am I being paid for it, so we’ll see how it all goes from here - today I get lunch for sure! Missed it yesterday no car, my ride ditched me, could of had Scott bring me some tasty bits, but I failed lol. So today, it will be tasty indeed! I just need to get cash from a ATM somewhere.
Anywhoo - that’s my update, so far so good, really am tired, but it happens for now I am off to once again look at these old database formats and see if I can’t get things happy somewhere within the flow.
