First real post in 2 years

So what’s been happening in my life?

We bought a new house in Ashburn in March. We moved in a few months before that, but were waiting to sell our townhouse. The house is awesome! It’s on about a quarter of an acre, in a great neo-traditional neighborhood. We’ve done a ton to the house already, and it looks great!

House

Shortly after we moved here, India our Rotti girl lost it completely. After several attempts to reverse her behavior, we had to let her go. Shortly after, we began looking for a new puppy. We wanted to find a dog that would be completely submissive to China, as well as just being an all around awesome dog! So we picked this little guy from a breeder.

Benny The Golden

A little over a year ago, I quit my job at MITRE, and went to work for a “startup” called OpSource. I was hired as the Sr. Linux Engineer for Data Center Operations. These days, I end up doing more management, than engineering, but it’s still a good gig. I mostly work from home, or any other random place with wifi. I’m starting to work in InfoSec now on top of my normal workload, with the intentions of switching over full time as soon as they can afford to replace me.

I could ramble on about the past 2 years forever, but I think I’ll take it one post at a time for now. Commenting is now open, but you must register.

. . .

So ummm… yeah.

I don’t really know why I haven’t updated this thing in a while. I never have been good at it. Any how. Things have been going pretty good. I’ve been busy with work, side projects, and life in general. Steph and I just got back from a short trip to Vegas. It was a nice getaway, and we got to meet up with some friends there. Unfortunately 2 of our other friends who were supposed to meet us there had to cancel at the last minute. So I’m just gonna have to bug the shit outta them to come visit us here in VA 😉 I finally got a new cell phone with a camera, so I setup a moblog on textamerica. Not much there yet, and I need to customize it a bit, but it serves it’s purpose.

Wow, this got pretty long

10 months after I got my car, I finally got the body kit for it last week! I had just about written it off, and was going to just get the dealer to credit me the cost, and it magically appeared while I had my car in for normal scheduled maintenance. I am so through dealing with that dealership, and now thankfully I have nothing tying me to them. I wrote up a 3 page complaint about them, that I am sending to Infiniti consumer affairs. Hopefully they will break a foot off in some asses over there, so no one else has to go through the crap that I did. A new Infiniti dealer opened up in Chantilly, which is about 10 minutes from my house, so I’m gonna start bringing my car there.

I finally got my ass into the dentist a few months ago. I have undergone three 4 hour procedures to try to fix all the mess that was my teeth. I don’t have the total, but it’s been 2 root canals (in 2 teeth next to one another), gum surgery above those 2 teeth, somewhere between 10 – 15 fillings, and a deep cleaning of my gums and teeth. I still have temporary crowns on the 2 root canaled teeth that I have to get replaced with the permanent porcelain crowns in a couple weeks. And since dental insurance sucks ass, I have paid several thousand dollars out of pocket for this after the $1500/yr dental insurance limit. Next year, I’ll start work on the more cosmetic stuff, like trying to get my bottom row aligned, and some bridgework. The moral of the story kids… Don’t ever put off going to the dentist for nearly 15 years!

In other news, I’m in the process of switching my phone lines over to Vonage, to get away from Verizon. I pay entirely too much money for phone lines that hardly get used. I’ll be saving about $35/mo after all is said and done. In the process, I’m also gonna switch my alarm system over to a broadband monitoring service, which will save close to another $20/mo. I know it’s not as reliable as a phone line, but in the end, who’s to say either is gonna work when it needs to? We fool ourselves into believing that it’s actually going to help when/if the time comes, when in reality in most cases help is too late anyway. As far as I’m concerned, as long as the siren sounds, the alarm has done it’s job. Everything else, is just a bonus that may help a bad situation.

We’ve been doing some work around the house, trying to make things more our own. It’s funny that we’ve been there just about 5 years, and we had hardly done anything to the place. Granted, we picked out a lot of the stuff in the build process, but there were always a lot of things we wanted to change, like paint. So far we have only done the kitchen, but we are slowly working through the rooms one by one. We are both into a lot of asian/indian stuff, so that has been the theme. It’s amazing how much some color, or artwork can change the way you feel when you are in a room. I’m gonna try and get the yard landscaped in the next month or so, since it’s all dirt again. Feng Shui I say!

India, (our rotti/shar-pei mix) has been having some “issues” that we are trying to work out. We’re trying some herbal (magnesium) treatments to see if it helps, along with task of trying to rid the environment of whatever “triggers” we can. If the herbal treatments don’t help, we’ll have to try prozac. I am not a fan of psychiatric medication of any kind, but if it helps to balance things out in her brain, then I’m all for it.

I guess that about covers my life the past 6 months.

goonie goo goo!

I had a decent weekend. Did some admin stuff, both business and for stv. Did some yard work yesterday. And I found someone to take the ferrets! Unless something happens, she’s picking them up on Saturday. That’s about all I guess.

Oh yeah,.. I love you Steph!

worlock is: a monkeya monkey

BAH!

I want my weekend back. Back to work today, though it feels like I never left. Got rid of the on-call shit this morning, so that’s a plus. Monday’s are my early day, cuz we take china to her d00gie class in the evening. I think this week or next week is the last class. We haven’t really gained much from the class. The book they gave us is very helpful, but in the class the trainer just follows what’s in the book. And I don’t like one of the other dogs in there, and china really does not like him. I still think the class was worth every penny though, because we have learned how to control some of her bad habits. Not much else going on. Bored at work, wishing I was doing something else.

bleh

It’s days like today that I wish I didn’t have any animals. I just spent the last two hours cleaning up after ferrets, and cats. It doesn’t seem to matter what I do, the ferrets dump all of their litter on the bottom level. It’s really annoying. I think I’m just gonna get rid of the litter boxez all together, and just fill the entire bottom level with litter, since that’s what they do anyway. Maybe it’ll save em the work.

Other than that, the weekend has gone way too fast, as usual. I got a lot of work done, but I’d like to relax some. I will probably spend the rest of the night working on the site though instead.

ARGGGHHH!!!!
I can’t take this shit much longer. I had a pleasant 1 hour & 25 minute commute this morning. Did not see a single accident, I have no idea why it was so bad. I am so bitter about this job right now. Everytime things look like they might be getting better, and worth the commute, they find another way to shit on me. I can’t believe that with all the tech industry around my house, I can’t find a single fucking job. I keep submitting my resume, but I get no love. Oh, and on top of my shitty morning, I found out last night that the person who was supposed to be taking my ferrets, neglected to ask the people she lived with before saying that she would take them. Not that this comes as any surprise to me, as everyone who has shown intrest in them, has ended up flaking out right before they were supposed to pick them up. So I guess they’re heading off to a rescue. I hate to do it, but I have held on to them WAY longer than I wanted. They are not being taken care of the way that they should. Anyways, if anyone want’s them, please let me know ASAP, cuz they are outta here as early as this weekend otherwise.

I had a pretty good weekend. I got a shitload of work done on the site, even got that form working (though I still have to add a few functions to it). Just a few minor adjustments to make and the site should be ready to go live later on today. Unfortunately, that is about all I did this weekend. There’s a ton of stuff I need to do around the house. You’d think that since Steph is home all day now that she’d have more free time to get stuff done. This is so not the case! I’m sure she’ll have a lot more time starting this week, since my slave drivin ass (as she put’s it) won’t be making her work on my site in her free time. I am waiting to here from the landscaper’s today, to find out when they are gonna be able to come out and finish the patio job. I decided to just let them do the whole thing, since the price it would cost me to have them just do the excavation, and hauling, was over half the cost to finish it off including materials. I can’t wait to have it done so we can get the rest of the backyard lookin good. China is killing all the grass out there from peeing on it. I need to figure out if theres something to help avoid it. I dont remember my grass being dead when I had dog’s before.

Well,.. I made it into work in 35 minutes door to door. This weekend was good, just went by way too fast (dont they always). Saturday night, Steph, Rudy, and I went out to thai lemon grass for dinner. Food was great, I miss that place. Afterwards, Rudy and I got started on the new firewall config. I stayed up till about 4am workin on it, then finally forced myself to go to bed. Woke up around 11 yesterday, and got right back on it. I put my laptop behind the firewall, and had no problems, so I decided to put Steph’s powerbook behind to test. Her powerbook is connected to the net via an airport. For those of you not familiar with what an airport actually does, it’s basicly a router for a wireless network. Unfortunately because of this, it must have it’s own arp table that you can’t get to, because it was being a bitch everytime I’d make a change. I spent the entire day fighting with her stupid mac hardware, which would just randomly stop communicating with the router. Finally around 9pm, a friend gave me the idea of putting it on a separate hub off of the switch, to see if it would clean up. That did the trick, it was workin great, even figured out a way to get Steph’s irc program through the firewall. So tonight, I will put the servers behind and pray that all is good. Today we start the d00gie obedience classes. It’s an 8 week class that meets every monday. It should be fun. All for now.

d000gie!!

I got a puppy last night! Steph posted a couple picz hereWe have been looking at dog adoption pages lately, and saw that HART was doing an adoption at one of the local pet stores. So we went to look. As we were walking up I saw china through the window. We had seen pics of her online (she is one of 5 siblings), and I instantly fell in love with her. She is half chow, half german shepard. Her mom was pure chow, her dad pure shepard. Not only does it make for a beautiful dog, but the shepard should help tame the chow attitude a bit. So far she has been great. We had a good nights rest, I woke up at 7 to her, I heard her making a little noise waking up. We went outside, and she took care of business. I was getting into the shower, and she decided that she needed a shower too, and ran in! I figured what the hell, now is as good a time as any to bathe her. It must be the shepard in her, cuz from what I have read, chow’s dont like baths much. We took a trip out to petsmart with her, to pick up some more stuff, and let her mingle with some other dogs. They were having an adoption there today, so ther was at least 30 dogz roaming around. She seems to have no problems interacting with other dogz, and children as well. Right now she’s curled up on the floor asleep, with her lil green monkey I got her.

Okay, so I know I haven’t written anything in a while, I’ve been busy. My vacation officially started today YAY! Yesterday we had our final walk-thru in the house. Surprisingly, there were only a few minor things that needed done. Like touch up some paint here or there. If my damn mortgage processor actually gets off her ass and gets things done today, we should be all set for closing on Wednesday. It will be a busy vacation for me, I am going to get boxes today. We haven’t started packing at all. Steph has done a little organizing, but no real packing. The movers are scheduled to be here Friday morning sometime between 8 & 10. Before then, I need to move my fish which I am not looking forward to. Not only will the fish be incredibly stressed from being bagged for at least an hour, but it is going to be hard to salvage much water. 55 Gallons is a lot of water! I’ll be lucky if I can save more than a few gallons. Which means I will hafta add at least 10 gallons of water to the tank as right away, and fish really don’t like that. Well, gotta get this day started.