It has been a while since I picked up a good book. I had a favorite author Jefferson Scott - who I was nice enough to email back and forth with once - his first books that caught my eye were the Ethan Hamilton stories, namely the progression from Virtually Eliminated (going to read it again soon) - but the stories are wonderfully written, and not just some “magical computer terms” like the movie Hackers “let’s hack a gibson!” and no spray painted Apple laptops, simple, true, accurate goodies - but the stories tied in Faith to the whole story, tied it into the job, the walk, the day-to-day of the character’s life. Amazing Stories.
Then yet again, he wrote the Operation Firebrand series - yowza! I could put those down, as I heard one was released, I was at Barnes and Noble or CBD placing and order to get it to me, sadly I found myself done in a night. LoL - Re-Read them again this past year in under 3 days - the stories are about a miltary unit that uses non-lethal weapons to carry out, how should I put it, Extreme Missionary Field Work 
but again very accurate, visual books, that in some cases even with just the people you meet in the story, brought tears to my eyes.
Sadly, no other books of the Fiction variety have come from him lately, and who knows maybe one day they will, but I have said all this for two reasons:
- Mr. Scott - I love your books, today as much as I did when I bought them, a massive blessing to me!
- I need more books!
I find myself constantly in front of the computer anymore, with a day-job and a business of my own which keep me busy, a book to burry my head in would be good for a change. I have found some other Christian writers who do decent fiction, but I want fiction, I deal with Real Life enough as is, a blip off the radar from PHP/dBase/MySQL/How-to books, would be a great relief.
So if you have a thought or two, post your suggestions in the comments either here or on Xanga, and let me know if you have ANY sort of suggestion, even Non-Fiction suggestions are allowed, but again a little escape from reality would do me good
That’s it for tonight, I am off to see what these 24 emails are then hopefully passout! Have a blessed Sunday!
What a week, a slew of changes, ups, downs, backwards, forwards, friends gained, friends lost, toaster strudel (mmm love that icing) and ideas for projects, but thru it all, I have seen several adults this week act VERY childishly in regards to issues at hand - just sometimes wonder if it was the alignment of the planets.. maybe China has a “10 yr old” ray-gun that reverts folks to dealing with things by comments like “Turd Head” (oh yes, they went there) - but lots of things were resolved by people this week in that manner, leaving myself and a few others going “HUH?” - but maybe once the moon is full… lol who knows.
Tonight is a server migration! (YAY!) new servers came online for a customer earlier today, and it all is falling into place, which is super cool, even a new feature in cPanel which wasn’t there the last migration, which will switch the IP for me on the current DNS servers, with the size of this move, and all sites currently living on 1 server, that was gonna get messy doing updates thru the night, but this way - DONE! So very excited, I may, dare I say it, knock on wood, clap that you believe in fairies, and of cour say a prayer - this could go even smoother than I imagined!
But the only thing that is holding me up tonight, is a overdose of fun! As you can see from flickr -> my good buddy Scott said “PHOTO FRIDAY!” (okay so maybe not exactly that, but his offer translated to that in my head, I miss the photo days, and just getting out, we hit Lake Ming which is nearby and I gave him some tips on using his camera, and we had fun (or at least I did, but I hope he did too!) but some fun shots, he has some up too - so it was neat, had dinner (which I wasn’t too hungry - I think my lunch was icky) - but I arrived home to get the call about the aforementioned migration above
So it has been a whirlwind week, the weekend should be fun, I have a show I am going to with my Cousin, a friend’s husband is playing at a Borders so it should be a fun weekend with the Cuz, and there is a Atlantis episode somewhere, hope the DVR didn’t freak this week too - last week it missed it! Silly Brighthouse DVR!
Anywhoo - so much on my mind still some not quite ready for prime time in the public spotlight, but one thing really on my heart is a bit from earlier this week, the one I can’t chat about - you know the one (well God does) it still just seems odd, brash, sudden, but no one is talking to me about it - so I am leaving it as is, and let folks cool/calm/sort it out etc. and I’ll be here when folks want to talk - but my hope is something works out for everyone (vague I know). Have a WONDERFUL weekend! I am already shooting for NEXT weekend, as I am going to see my buddy turn 8 (go goofball!) and meet my Nephew and give him his first Photo Shoot 
Night!
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 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.
I guess there is a balance to things in the world - that whole “zen” bit, as today had been shaping up to be a good day, and it ended so poorly. Life is a funny thing - but as a whole the day went well, and I am going to focus mainly on that, and let the rest sort it self out when things come around.
Going to go loaf on the couch, flip on Eureka, then off to bed, as morning is going to yet again, come early, and present me with a full day of challenges. Keep me in your prayers, odd stuff went down tonight, not really something I want to air out here, but one way or another I imagine it’ll workout, usually does.
Anywhoo - as crazy as it sounds, have a good Fake Friday, its already mid-week! Only 2 more days left, then I am going to take a long long nap. Thanks in advance for the prayers. Night folks!
Well I got some mini-details on the meeting this morning, things went well, I got a budget, some things sorted, and apparently I am not fired - so positive, I will get a more complete run down tomorrow I guess, so I should know more then.
I got a call mid-day from a sales person @ NaviSite - which knew absolutely 0 about me, my company, etc. kid really didn’t do his homework and just kept ignoring what I was saying, funny really, not the best pitch I have heard, I’ll give cold calls a few minutes to grab me, and in the past I have gotten some good hookups with Ensim and such - so it can be a nice thing, but to come in and not even ask me needs till the 5th question, at which point I was already done, finally I had to just hang up, everything I said “No Thank You” to, it was just grinding it in - I am happy with my current solutions for customers, they work, they are affordable, and the companies I am working with a respectful, so not about to change anytime soon, but they really didn’t give me any reason to even want to at this point lol.
But things are going good today all things considered, hope to hear more on tomorrow to hear what the entire rundown is, and go from there.
Anywhoo - 10 minutes left, backup is almost complete, getting the last bits of projects around here done - so home soon, then possibly off to OfficeMax and snag a paper shredder, and possibly a color laser printer… maybe. 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.
