diehn.net/blog

SO long ago it’s lost in the fog of burnt neurons, I made MRTG do one-minute polling and now I have to do it again….. ugh…

Spent most of the day doing invoices. That’s kind of fun, actually. I keep detailed records of my time at client sites and it’s fun to go back over them when I build the invoices – see where I was when. It’s a sort of work diary.

Had a great lunch at the Bagel Basement with Paul Landry. Don’t really know how we fell into this, but he and I have been doing weekly lunches for a while now and I’m very glad. We’re fun together and we laugh, share insights about work about people and orgs we know, etc.

Got to dress up in new, comfortable clothes today and I always love that. Makes me feel more confident, more happy to know that I look good and not to have old, shrunken, outsized clothes constricting me.

Went to interview with the IML today. Nice people, smart, serious about their work but nothing like stuffy. They have need of a sysadmin for Linux, WinX, MacX servers and workstations in a middling small shop and want that person to so some Tool Smithing and minor WebDev as well, with Ruby on Rails I think. This looks promising and I hope they’ll choose to make me an offer.

Got word back from ISTS that they aren’t going to be able to fill their vacant sysadmin spot right now. Hmmm… is that a polite turn-down or is it a symptom of their rumored decline? I’m not sure how I feel about this. Of course, I don’t like not being offered a position – I feel inadequite somehow. On the other hand, the position seemed a bit small for me as a full-time gig and they seem to be shrinking. Their mission is interesting and I was hoping that I’d get involved with research but that was probably wishful thinking.

Tallis and Luca have been just lovely the last few days. And that’s good because we’ve had so much rain since last Friday that no-one wants to go outside. They’ve been playing together nicely, adoring we parents, helping around the house…

Rain, rain… oh my god. Anyone that’s looked at the media has seen now that NH and MA are flooding. It’s really not that bad up here in the Upper Valley, but the constant raining and the mud are getting annoying. The paddocks are bogs again. The horses are just destroying the new grass and we can’t really keep them out back – they need the shelter up front. Ugh. ANYWAY.

Read Todd’s bit about the Blue Security fiasco. Wow. He’s in some big circles of influence on the ‘net. I just know him as that guy up in Hanover that was gonna help us at FINOWEN with routing. Nice fella, smart as all get-out.

BlueSecurity got what they deserved, I think. I’m not taking sides in the spam war here, I’m talking more genericly: you start trying to force people to do things and eventually one of them is gonna apply force in return. I mean, really. What did they think was going to happen? Lot’s of people live their lives fighting the rest of the world in some fashion or another. I’m not guiltless in this, of course. But I do try not to do it. I do try to pay attention to the flow of things around me and go with the flow instead of blindly fighting against it.

Luc is still flailing around with FINOWEN. I really wish he’d just let it die and move on with his life so the rest of us can pick up the pieces. But I really don’t think that’ll happen.

Ah well.

Hah. Just realized the other day that I was actually laid off back in November. Weird. I mean, like, I knew that I was no longer with the company that had folded, that I was working on my own, that Andi and I had put together a small consulting firm to freelance my tech skills. But the concept of having been L A I D O F F just never got through to me until I read it in one of Andi’s articles in the Upper Valley Parent’s Paper.

So weird…

Me, laid off. I’ve NEVER lost a job, been fired, been laid off. Oh, but wait. Now I have! HAH! Maybe I’ll have to have Andi fire me next. She is the president of our Firm, after all. Or is that me?

My son has learned to pee in his potty. He’s sitting over there across the living room from me, happily sitting on his potty, reading a book (three and a half years old), and he looks up at me with a sly grin on his face and says – “I fahrted!” And then a minute later, “I fahrted again!” He’s still happily sitting over there, watching the Jack-o-Lantern we carved this evening, flicking his wee peenie….

Love my boys to pieces!

Having young children has turned my brain to mush, man. I really can remember when my mind was agile, quick, deep… well. Well…. yeah. It’s been about four years now since either my wife or I have slept through the night more than one night in a row and man… let me tell you, that really makes my brain mushy. All the time.

blah blah blah.

Erik’s getting married in Italy next month. Wheee!!

Man… being sick sucks. But worse is getting better but not quite all the way? You know? Man, this sucks. The cold and flue and all that crap mostly left, but it left behind a huge, deep caugh and buckets of lung crap… ugh…

Google me, google you? They got me started here – I just can’t resist pressing buttons and they put a nice orange one on their toolbar… 🙂