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This may be why my view of housing cost is so skewed, with me growing up in Ok and all. I knew I didn't want to live in Cali... Not to mention the stress of knowing your going to fall off into the ocean at any moment, you also have to figure out how much crack you have to sell to be able to afford a house. And I thought Mine was a lot....

Most expensive housing markets in the U.S. - Oct. 22, 2003

Nobody is immune

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No, really... NOBODY is immune. When it comes to safe computing I'm one of the safest. I don't open any attachments that I'm not 100% expecting, no matter how much I want a CD Key for my favorite program I don't go to my local warez site located in the deepest, darkest corners of the net, I update my OS and my AV at LEAST once a week and I have a big, bad ass, hardware firewall between me and all the baddies. Even with all of this it's still possible for me to get a virus and it's happened. I was lucky enough to notice the viral type activity pretty quickly and it was more of a harassing virus rather than a damaging virus. Evidently during some of my internet travels I visited an infected site. Thanks to Microsoft and their sifter known as windows (lots of holes) this site was able to execute hostile code on my machine. Unfortunately during my troubleshooting and attempting to determine the issues on my machine I cleared all my temp inet files as well as cookie and history. With out this history I can't remember which site I may have gone to in order to get infected. I don't really know what else to do short of just unplugging from the internet. I have moved away from IE and am now using Mozilla in a hope that it'll be safer, which it is. I'm going to move most of my Internet options to my favorite Linux box tuxbert, and If I can find some Linux web cam software and support I'll move everything to that and this machine will become a gaming box only. Pretty sad it has to come to that, but thems the breaks.....

My job sucks….

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My job really does suck some times. Now don't get me wrong, I love my job, and I actually really like where I work. What I'm talking about is the actual profession of being and IT god or something... :) See in this profession many, many, MANY times if a company is firing or laying off ppl the IT guy may not be the first to know, but usually knows before the person. That in itself sucks because many time these are ppl you work with every day and are friends. It's not really hard to keep you mouth shut and just wait it out, but it doesn't feel very good. Weird things have happened in the past with things like this. Once we had someone sending "abusive and degrading" emails to the company according to the owner. It was my job to find out who was sending them and from where. I did my job and provided the info even after I found that it was one of my friends that sent the email. Another time I was called in to the office for them to tell me they just fired one of my best friends. That sucked and I'm really glad I didn't have to know about that one before hand. But after I was asked to gather all sorts of data that could possible point the finger at this friend. That too was tuff but it was my job and did it. At this job it's no different. Today a friend of mine was let go. It was not very much fun. I had to be the witness ya know just in case. But ya know, even as much as this profession sucks and as bad as it can make you feel, it's still a really good feeling when you can do your job like a professional just like you are supposed to.

Miracles

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Do you believe in miracles? I do. Well I guess we should start out by defining miracles. You may believe that walking on water, parting the sea, or turning water into wine may examples of miracles. But what about being able to get your truck into your garage? Well to me, this too is a miracle. Now don't get me wrong, it just barely fits, but it does fit. I had to rearrange my garage so to not have anything against the wall in front of the truck to allow this miracle to happen. When I say nothing in front, I mean NOTHING. With the truck snuggly in it's "hanger" I have a whopping 6 inches of space in front as well as back. This means that if the truck in the garage, and the garage door is closed, there is no way for me to get to the other side, say for instance, to get to the tool box, or maybe to get in the truck to start it or something. I guess I could be the monkey I am and climb over, but in the morning with me all starched up and clean with a crease in my pants and everything I'm sure I'd dork something up in the process. I guess I'll have to be stuck with just opening up the door to get to the other side. It's a small price to pay I guess. I need no more hail damage.

Small World

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Don't you hate when your watching Discovery Wings and you say, "Hey, what's Capt Dobb doing on TV?". I was watching a show on test pilots. One of the guys they were following through test pilot school was a guy that I flew with out of Dover. We were both in the 9th Airlift Squadron. Actually we both did some test flights outta Edwards just 6 or 8 months before I got out. I guess he got a taste of the test pilot life and liked it. He's now specializing in 130's but I'm sure the C-5 experience won't be wasted.

As the Toe Turns, Part II

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Toe update status.

Toe #1
This is the toe that I initally broke a couple of months ago. This toe is doing much better. Normal walking and such does not cause any problems or pain. There is still a moderate amount of pain if you bend the toe at strange angles. I know, don't do that, but it must be done to test the ammount of healing that has taken place. I would expect another 2 - 4 weeks and this toe should be back to 100% toe worthy.

Toe #2

This is the toe that I tried to rip the top off of a week or two ago. I initially had a couple days of sever pain assoicated with this toe. Upon further inspection the healing that was trying to take place was being aggravated by the toe nail actually poking it over and over again as I walked. After about ten minutes of blinding pain as I cut away the surrounding toe nail and much of that walking pain was gone. After the poking pain subsided I realized that this toe too feels either broken or at the very least severly sprained. It hurts to move it up, down, or sideways. I think my basketball days are over, for now anyways.

I'll keep you informed on this breaking story.

A brief moment of enlightenment!

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Something happened to me today. Brandt and I went out to get some things done today. Most of it things I'd been putting off while I was sick. One of those things I wanted to get done was to buy a new pair of sun glasses. My "Daddy O's" got broken on a ride at Six Flags so I have reverted back to my "Predator 2's". They are both good glasses. Anything that RayBan makes is pretty decent. Well we were in the Sun Glass Hut and looking through there stuff. I found the glasses I wanted. I had every plan on buying a pair. Anybody that knows me knows I've kinda got a thing for my glasses so I was prepared to spend a buck or two on them. Well the first pair I liked weren't RayBan's but I figured what the hell. I'm willing to go out on a limb. Then I noticed they were $249. Well with the way my electric bill has been the last three months I didn't think I could pull off that kind of money for sun glasses. I moved down the line and to my next choice. They were pretty close to my Daddy O's in appearance. I like them but they were $140 which were what my Daddy O was also. Well standing there with my debit card in hand I made the decision I never thought I would. No $140 glasses for me. Not today anyway. We still had the monster trip to the grocery store before the end of the day. I think I'll just send my Daddy O's back to Rayban and see what they can do for me. Last time they replaced them for me free of charge. I can probably deal with the Predators for a while longer. At least then if they say they won't fix/replace them I'll maybe have a few more buck for my new eyes.

Midnight Carwash

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Have you ever thought of the benefits of washing your car/truck in the middle of the night? I have, and I did. I mean I don't normally get home until close to 7pm and it's getting dark earlier and earlier. Last night I got home and had something to eat and it was already dark. I wasn't going to let a little darkness get in my way. I mean, yeah you can't really see what your doing and if you turn on a bunch of lights you attract like every bug within a 5 mile area, but there are a lot of plus's too! No sunburn, and speaking of the sun, it doesn't dry things out so it's still wet when you come back with the shammy so you have no water spots. Those pesky neighbors aren't always lookin at you, cuz they can't see you. It worked out pretty well for me I think....

The Big Sleep

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So the night before last was pretty ruff! I was awake most of the night coughing and hackin up what lungs I have left. If you were to add up all the sleep I had together it would be about 2 hours. So with that and still feeling really pretty crappy I came home from work an hour or so early. I wasn't home very long and I deceded to go lay down for a while. I put Brandt on autopilot and gave him instuctions for the rest of the night. I asked him to come get me in a hour or so just in case I were to fall asleep. Well at about 8pm he came and woke me up. I wasn't having any of that. Next thing I knew it was 10:30pm and he was waking me up again telling me he was going to bed. I tucked him in, turned out the lights, and headed back to bed. This morning I woke up and the alarm had been going off for almost an hour. I got really lucky cuz it turns itself off at the hour mark. So after 12 or 13 hours of sleep I'm actually feeling almost not dead again. I'm thinking that I need 12 hours of sleep every night. One more reason for there to be a law extending a "normal" day from 24 hours to 36. Everybody would be much happier!

That thing got a Hemi?

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Well today I was way sick. I feel like I was run over by a big ole truck. I'm starting to feel a little better but still not what I'd like. There are soooo many things I was supposed to do this weekend. It looks like I'm not going to be able to get any of them done. I did learn something very important today. The other day Brandt broke a glass. I just thought this was him being goofy and knocking something over. Pretty much like normal. But no, he informed me it was "The classic struggle of Man vs. Glass". See this is something I did not know. I didn't realize that man vs. glass was a classic stuggle. I better start paying more attention.