Wednesday, January 25, 2006

Flight of fancy


I'm a closet fighter pilot. I've been in love with airplanes since I was a kid. A guy in my program at the University of Phoenix did fab work at Boeing on the F-22. He was kind enough to send me this photo of the F-22 over downtown Seattle. It's gorgeous.

Sunday, January 22, 2006

The time has come

Well, I am now, officially, a college graduate. I had the last classroom session of my final class in my degree program. Woot!!! I just ordered my diploma and now hold a Bachelor of Science in Information Technology. Not that this changes much for me right now. The company I work of doesn't have a lot of upward mobility for me right now, but I'm willing to be patient.

In other news, we were able to successfully migrate our equipment from our old racks to our new ones with a minimum of trouble. The worst part was a missing crossover cable for my the outside interface on my firewall.

The final note in my triumvirate of good news is that the Seattle Seahawks are going to Superbowl XL! (I did this wrong in my initial post. Somehow, I think that the real Roman numeral representation of 40 will be more appropriate when the Seahawks win. )

(Interesting fact: My wife and I were talking about the game on Sunday and the Superbowl. It's the 40th Superbowl and my wife will be 40 this year. She thinks it's fate. The 'Hawks are going to win.)

Friday, January 20, 2006

Mac Setup and more on Flickr - Photo Sharing!

Oh my freaking lord! Check out this dude's setup. This should make Chewie and his lovely wife drool.

Mac Setup and more on Flickr - Photo Sharing!

Tuesday, January 17, 2006

A solution to life's problems


My worst fears have come true. The joy that was to be my final day in class will now be marred by Qwest and a data center move. They have wanted us to move for several months. The couldn't get the data center work completed before Christmas, and I told them that I would move during the first part of January '06. I didn't hear from them upon my return from the break. I shouldn't have called them on it, but I was concerned that they would tell me that they wanted me to move right in the middle of our buildout at work.

Luckily, we won't be deploying our 100Mb/s Metro-Ethernet circuit. That means I don't have to worry about router configurations and new VLANs for at least another month. While I'm relatively comfortable with doing them, Cisco has changed the OS on their Catalyst switches enough that I can't fall back on my 6509 for guidance. Dammit.

Of course, I was hoping to not have to work this weekend. But, that is not to be. I'm not happy about it. Not at all. While looking through my e-mail, I found this note from Fez and it seemed appropriate. Thanks Fez!

Sunday, January 15, 2006

Today marks the first day of my freedom from newsgroup postings as part of my degree program. Huzzah!!!! Actually, I can't believe I just put that down. I guess I'm letting my geek show a little too much. I'm on a countdown to the end of my degree program. I have one presentation to do and part of a team project. That's it! I'm done after that. I have but to order my diploma and walk at the graduation ceremony in June.

I'm really looking forward to this individual assignment. I am supposed to reflect on the person I was when I started the program, the things I learned while in the program, and then the person I am now. It should be fun. I've got some good ideas for the actual presentation, but I want to mull them over a bit before I get started.

Friday, January 13, 2006

I don't have a problem...

I have been outed by Fez. A few weeks ago, we found a site and made South Park characters. He's put them up on his site, and methinks I'm going to beat him. I was planning on using mine later and I cant' now. Ah well. I can't blame Fez. He's finally doing a blog, and I get to harass him in yet another way. What could be better?

Sunday, January 08, 2006

It never fails.. Dell 30" monitor?

I don't this to become a technology blog, but I just happened to look at a link on Slashdot that blew me a way. Dell is now selling a 30" wide-aspect LCD display. Kinda makes my new 24" LCD look puny. Although I don't think that I could fit it on my desk. My new one takes up almost all of the space my 2 18" inchers took before. Good god.

Dell Monitor 3007WFP Product Details

and then, there was peace

I figured out the "blanking" problem with my monitor. It turns out that my kick ass video card doesn't support 1920X1200 on DVI. It almost does, which is why it blanked. I switched cables back to analog and I haven't had a lick of trouble since.

On a good note, my father-in-law wants to buy one of my old NEC 18" LCD's. Maybe I can put that money from that toward a new video card. :-)

Thursday, January 05, 2006

The ball is rolling

The last couple of days have been both busy and not busy. With the new year comes all of the IT projects that we've put off. I'm just beginning the process of outlining our goals for the year and fleshing out the who's, what's and where's of them all. It's looking to be a busy 6 months.

On the personal side, I received my new monitor on Tuesday and have been up waaaay too late playing. It works great, except for one issue. Randomly, my screen will blank and come back. I'm afraid that it's my video card, but it may just be DVI support on my card. I'm going to try switching it back to analog to see if it performs better. If not, I'll need to decide what to do.

Tuesday, January 03, 2006

Sun, glorious sun

My buddy just sent this to me. This picture, I think, summarizes why I love living in the Northwest. A beautiful sunrise on January 3rd, 2006. The skies are clear and it's just cold enough to make you want to drink something warm.

The image was taken from his office window, which overlooks downtown Seattle. He told me that he was blinded by that sun about 5 minutes after the picture was taken and that he had to shut his blinds. It was worth it though.

Monday, January 02, 2006

In with the new...

The first day for 2006 proved to be both relaxing and enjoyable. The little shindig was quite fun, although Aaron bugged out at about 11:30PM. I hope he got busy. At this very moment, I'm trying to log into World of Warcraft. I started off by sitting in queue. I don't think I've ever seen the server full. I then sat through the character loading screen. Now, I'm sitting at the login screen, which has been the same for what seems like 10 minutes. What a load... wait.. I'm in. Bye!