Testing, Testing, Is this thing on?

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So I'm doing a little testing on the website lately. Since most of the web site is already PHP I guess there might be a chance that I might screw things up. I'm still playing with the php and mysql combination. I'm putting all my test things in the test menu so hopefully they won't cause any problems. I've currently got three different guestbooks there I'm re-coding to get to work. I haven't decided if I'm going to use any of them yet. Right now they are making my head hurt.

Guestbook1
Guestbook2
Guestbook3

Fire, Fire, Fire….

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So yesterday was a pretty dull day at work. Well that was until the fire alarms started going off. In our building It seems like about once a week they are either setting off the fire alarms or testing them. So when the alarms started going off this time I pretty much ignored them. I finished what I was doing, downloading drivers, and poked my pointy little head out of my office. It was deserted out there. Hummm... I guess I should probably mosey on out and see whats going on. It was about that time I saw the fire truck fly by my window. Everything seemed normal there in the office but once I got out into the hall I knew that it was really something this time. There were still ppl streaming outta the stairwell, luckily enough we are on the first floor, and there was a strong odor of burining electrical something or other. I continued to mosey where I was met by a police man that had some serious issues. After the fire guys got in, they found it was a UPS in one of the server rooms up on the second floor that had caught fire. It wasn't much of a big deal, a lot of smoke, fumes, and questions like, what would we do if it were our server room that burnt down? I basicly said you'd go home and I'd go shopping. It'd be fun. :)

PHP/MySQL

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So I've been thrust into this mysql thing at work. I've always wanted to learn more about sql but not under fire. I think I have most of the sql thing hammered out. At least the admin side of things. Well whats the best thing to talk to sql from a linux box, php of course. So php has been kickin my ass this week. Most of it isn't very tuff if you know any kind of programing at all. But those fargin iceholes didn't tell me that MANY things changed between php's last major versions. I think every tutorial I've read so far was written on old versions of php which have changed, greatly. Anyway, even a blind squirrell finds a nut once in a while. I think I finally saw the light at the end of the tunnel. A couple more days of this and I should be ready to actually do something. Be prepared for me to goof up this site if that should happen. Anyhoo....

Yeah, Tivo!

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So the other night I came home and my worst fears were realized. My Ultimate TV was dead. In case your unfamiliar the Ultimate TV is something similar to Tivo. Well I guess it had died in the day sometimes cuz when I jumped into bed to watch a little “Most Extreme Elimination Challenge” (The greatest show on earth) I pressed the pwr button and nuthin, no light, sounds, smells, nuthin. Well it had been flaky for a while anyway. It was so bad I had already purchased a second Tivo to replace it and while I was at it I got the insurance on all of the receivers. I had sort of prepared for this day by keeping an extra receiver active and ready to go at a moments notice. So I pulled that one out and plugged it in and cranked it up. No go! It was goofy as well. This one was one I knew I could fix anyway. I called up Direct TV and asked them to put the paddles to my card and jump start it. They did and it came right back to life. I then remembered my insurance. I asked them who I needed to talk to in order to handle the dead UTv. They transferred me and soon I was talking to a tech. A few troubleshooting steps later and he too knew it was dead. He had bad news and he had good news. The bad news was that they weren’t making UTv’s anymore. That’s actually a good thing cuz compared to the Tivo the UTv sucked. The good news was he could replace it with a Tivo. I told him to go ahead with the exchange. He said it wasn’t even really an exchange. They didn’t want the UTv back so they just sent me a free Tivo. It should be here in the next day or so. At that point we will be a 3 Tivo family. It’s always good to have spares. There may be starving children in Africa with no Tivo’s at all, but I got three. They can come visit them if they want….

MMmummmMM!

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There is no way anybody could have known that it would have been sooooo hard to turn down a piece of cheese cake today. I went to lunch today at Razoo's the cajun place. After eating my gator tail and having a few crawfish my mouth just assumed that it was time for cheesecake. I'd have to say that I mostly agreed with it. That was one of the hardest things I've done in a long time. Hopefully it'll get easier....

It’s perfect

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How exactly do you know when you have perfect TV placement? Well I can tell you! When you can see the TV clearly from the bed, shower, bath tub, and toilet you know you have come as close as any person can come to have the perfect TV placement. OK, maybe you can somehow get it setup where you can see it from the fridge as well but I think that's probably asking a bit too much.

Decisions, decisions

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Life is full of decisions, diet or regular, to live or to die, scooby doo or spongebob. These are just a few of the easy decisions we have to make. I'm presented with a decision on the magnetude of mount everest as compared to these little ant hill choices. My decision is to stick with my current wireless ISP or to bail for the evil SBC and dsl service. One one hand my current ISP has really great tech support but they do have pretty slow access of 650k or so. I also have a problem with many dropped packets between me and the other side of the wireless bridge. Not the end all be all of high speed internet but still not bad considering when I moved here there was NO other high speed access. There is now a local cable serive available but I have heard nothing good about them so far. Now on the other hand there is SBC dsl. Sure they are the evil giant with ZERO tech support and they only get that cuz it's tuff to have negative tech support. But with that said I had sbc dsl in the apartment for two years and only had one outage that I remember and always had good steady connections. It'll cost me more with dsl for a static IP but in the long run I think it might be better and maybe a little tiny bit cheaper. It my current ISP could just fix the timeouts I think I'd be happy and a little more willing to stay but I dunno. They are just getting ready to do a pretty big peer change and hopefully that will change things. From my troubleshooting on my end it won't but I'll give them the benifit of the doubt.

Grrrrr

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So it's been a hell of a week at work. Going about 500 MPH it feels like. So in order to reward myself I bought me a new hard drive today. I need to rebuild this piece'O'crap. So I figured since I was running outta disk space I'd get something a little bigger. I got a 160GB maxtor for $119. That's not a bad price. Currently I have about 200GB of total drive space on here. It's about 75% full so this new drive will give me a little room to breath. Some of these games now a daze are huge. Flight Sim, X-Plane, and Halo are all over 1GB each. Many others are in the 500-600MB range so it adds up in a hurry. I also got enough connectors to get my 4 port KVM switch hooked up. I've been using a 2 port for quite a while. I liked it but I have 4 PC/Servers to deal with. I have another older 4 port but it's really klunky to switch and it doesn't support my mouse which is a bad thing. Anyway, tomorrow I start the rebuild so the web cams might be down for a while.

Busy as a stinkin little bee

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Well things have really picked up around here. Work, home, it's all busy. I've got tons of things here at home that I'm way behind in. My shower has all the tile ripped out of it, the lawn work is pittifully behind, and I'm gonna pull my hair out if I don't get to sweep and mop the damn floors soon. At work I have two moves going on at once. When you think of moving at work you generally think of just picking up your desk and files from one place and moving it to another. You don't really think of all the hard core IT stuff. When you plug in your phone, there has to be wiring and phone systems behind that. When you turn on your PC you should think of how that PC got there, the cabling that's in the wall, the servers that magically appeared in a little dark hole in the wall or closet. What about all the electricity that had to be run, and the A/C that was installed to keep all those servers cold and even down to the copper tubing to drain away the condensation collected by that A/C? There is a lot more to your IT guy than just some kid that plays a lot of Battlefield 1942.

Holloween

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Well it's holloween again. Pretty much my second or third least favorite holiday. I'm not into holidays where you have to do something. I like holidays like arbor day. Ya know just look at a tree and say, "yup, it's arbor day". I like things like that. Not like christmas where you have to plan for like forever. So anyway, its holloween and I think Brandt abandoned me this year. He took outta here like his hair was on fire or something with his little gang of friends. He went out to get his scare on I guess. So I'm stuck here passing out candy trying to keep the house from getting TP'd. I used to really hate passing out candy but it's not so bad any more. I really like the little kids that come to the door and are more afriad of me than I am of them. I like it when they feel they have to tell me what they are dressed up as and why they picked that to dress as. I also like it when they tell me what there sister is and why she isn't with them. :) What's the deal with the kids that don't even try to make an attempt of wearing a costume? Those are the kids that if two of them show up together I give them a kitkat and tell them to share. Also, if your 16 and you drive youself up to the house, don't bother comeing to the door. Well I guess I'm off to pass out sugar coated don't trick me bribery.

I hate Dallas

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Here is an example of one of the things I really hate about Dallas or any big city for that matter. Yesterday I was helping Teri move some things, Cuz I gotta truck and that's what guys with trucks do, and we had a load of things she needed hauled from point A to point B. We were pulling out of the parking lot and there was this elderly lady walking across the street up and up the curb. Well she fell. It didn't look like the worse fall in the world but she was easily in her 70's so any fall at that age can be bad. I stopped right there in the street and jumped out to try and help here. She said she wasn't hurt to bad but her shoulder did hurt a bit. She didn't think she broke anything. Well I first tried to get her up off the ground but she didn't really want to cooperate. I then asked if I could call someone for her or did she need medical attention. She really didn't want any of that. She just wanted me to leave her so she could "rest". She wasn't mean about it but I think she was very scared. I don't think she was so scared about falling as she was about a strange man trying to help her. It's a pretty sad state when you might be hurt but you are so afraid of the people around where you live that you'd rather deal with it yourself rather than to take the extended hand of someone who really wants to help you. I hate that this is the world that we live in and that's pretty much one of the reasons that I move way out here to the "sticks" (relatively speaking). I know if my grandmother fell I would really hope that someone would be there to help here and for that reason even though this wasn't a great experience, I'll try to help again if I'm in the same postion.