How to sucessfully take an insane road trip

I just went to a friend’s wedding.  She’s the crazy type that can’t do anything normal, so she got married on the coast father away than I though was possible while still being in-state.  Just to make things more fun, it was on a Thursday night.  Furthermore, my wife and I both had night classes we couldn’t miss on Wednesday night.  And just when you didn’t think it could get harder, I had a final exam that I couldn’t miss on Saturday morning.

And just how long of a drive is this?  How’s 10 hours for ya?

Nice.  I like a good challenge.

So we left Wednesday and drove for about 4 hours.  We crashed for the night at about 1am, just to get up at 7am and drive the rest of the way.  We took a “scenic” detour thanks to Google Maps (GRRRR, AAARRGGHH!) that wasted about an hour.  We finally got to the hotel and opened the door to our room at 5:15.  After a quick shower and a change, we showed up at the wedding at 6:20, just in time to miss the bride and groom walking in.

After the wedding we crashed at 11:30.  We woke up at 8 and hopped on the road once again.  I had a tire that was loosing pressure that I had to keep filling a little.  We got to a our former stopping place again and I took a 2 hour nap.  After that and dinner we hit the road again and got home at midnight.

All in all it was about 1,175 miles.  I was mean and didn’t let my wife drive a single mile of it.  So here’s the meat of the post:

1.  Never underestimate any amount of sleep.  Naps are amazing.

2.  Caffeine often doesn’t work unless your heart rate increases.  Just getting out of the car and doing some push-ups can really get it started for you.

3.  Pick good music.  Dave the classical, the power-ballads, the acoustic stuff for later.  No sappiness.  Also something fast paced that you can sing along with.  I’ve sang the same song 10 times in a row just to get me to my destination awake before.

4.  Don’t stop moving.  Dance if you can.  Heck, even just moving your arms and your neck around helps.  You will feel retarded… get over it.

5.  If nothing else, call a friend.  I’m sure they would like to catch up with you, especially if it keeps you from falling asleep and dying.

6.  Cruise control will get you there faster when you’re tired and not paying that much attention, although it does take control away from you… therefore freeing up your concentration.  Too much freedom of concentration and you’re unconscious.

Got any more ideas?  Let’s hear your comments!

Vacation Time is coming again!

Amy and I are trying to decide where to go for vacation this year. We have a little money we hacked off our tax return set aside but gas is so expensive, it may limit our options. We definitely like the beach, but there has to be something other than just the beach for us to really enjoy it. Last year we took a very special vacation (a honeymoon) to Charleston. We had a really great time and for all the stuff we did the trip was pretty inexpensive. Travel time was even pretty low. We’re considering Virginia Beach this year, but travel time and gas would both be a lot higher. Here’s a picture of me eating gator tails in Charleston:

Here’s a good one of me and my wife at the South Carolina Aquarium:

I can’t wait for another vacation. Hopefully we’ll do something really cool this time. I’m ready to get out of this town for a while and see some different scenery.

New Job - Student Computing

So today I officially gave word that I will be accepting a new position in the IT Department. I am very excited about the new position and all that it brings. They made the offer on Thursday, and I had a few things to mull over before giving an official answer. The job will be working with students and a team of two other staff members to serve the general student population. I will work in the evening from 1pm to 10pm. This allows me to keep taking classes in the morning which is when most of the ones I need are offered. I will be in charge of a small repairs shop for students, and managing the student employees that work it. I will also be hosting and giving presentations and seminars to students at various times throughout the year. I’ll be in charge of a blog and a podcast about student computing. We’re also talking about using lots of multimedia in the job as a way of reaching students. That may include radio spotlights, TV62 ads, newspaper articles, etc. When I asked about multimedia types that may be included during the interview, the response was “It can pretty much run the gambit.” I’m exited about getting some more experience in enterprise level networking, too. Sounds like fun to me. My concurrent bosses are fighting over when I will start right now. It’s a bad time for me to leave. We have 4 positions in our team, one of which is already vacant. When I leave that will cut our team in half, and we only have 2 weeks of classes left before finals. If I give my 2 weeks notice, then I’ll leave them high and dry during finals when things tend to go a little haywire. I’m supposed to figure out how to transition, but my bosses can’t come to agreement on it so they’re making me. Anyway, I’m ready for the change. I have 3 years of helpdesk experience and no one can take that away from my resume. I think doing something different will reflect positively on my career.

Tax Day!

So income taxes are due today.  This usually doesn’t bother me because I get my taxes done as early as possible.  Since I stopped becoming a dependent and started working for the state full time, I’ve stated getting a refund every year.  Therefore, I would rather get that refund as early as possible and put it in a high interest bank account so I collect more interest.  It makes me wish they just wouldn’t deduct so much taxes in the first place so I could be investing that money all along, but I know that’s just not how it works.

I do pretty well now.  My mom works for H&R Block as a tax preparer every year, and she gets them done for me.  She knows all the in’s and out’s of the system so I know what I can claim and what I can’t.  She also makes me claim stuff that I don’t want too, but that’s in my best interest for sure. I’ve got people.

If you ever want to improve your tax refund, GET MARRIED!  I was blown away at my refund that was over triple that of the prior year.  Not even a heck of a lot of taxes get taken out of Amy’s paycheck (where mine get raped).  Anyway, I got it all back and I should get an economic stimulus as well.  Wee!

Giving a good presentation

So I had to give a presentation as part of a job interview yesterday. I enjoy giving presentations because I think once I get a good grip on something or a good amount of knowledge about it, I have the ability to teach it pretty well. I have the ability to connect to people and write things at their level.

The number one rule of thumb when giving a speech or presentation is that you have to connect with people. I could give the most informative presentation ever made, but if I am monotone, boring, colorless, humorless, and dry, I might as well be reciting cookie recipes. Nobody would pay attention anyway. Even if you have to sacrifice a little bit of content to some pointless humor, it is worth it to get your audience in tune to what you are saying. I was giving a speech about Safe Computing Practices that was aimed at college freshmen. In the middle of talking about piracy and copyright infringement, I pulled up this video: 

Sure, it’s immature. But keep in mind, I was talking to College Freshmen. It was kinda hard to keep that in mind, actually, considering I was actually talking to 2 people my age and 2 slightly older people, but I was SUPPOSED to be talking to freshmen.

Fun stuff. I really hope I get the job. I’ll keep you posted.

haha.. get it?… POSTed?

Nobody Looks at your Shoes

So a few nights ago I couldn’t sleep.  I tossed and turned until I finally got up, took a shower and sat at the computer for a while.  At about 4 a.m. I crawled back in bed, and a half hour later I was finally asleep.  Morning came and the light stung my eyes.  I shuffled around the apartment getting ready for work.  I looked longingly at the coffee maker, but decided that I didn’t have time and I’d just have to wait until I got to work. 

Work was normal.  Once I got a half cup of coffee in me and sat down to my email I felt fine.  I went to a meeting and discussed the new management software with dozens of co-workers.  I went back to my desk and worked on wiki pages.  Everything was… normal.

I propped up my feet on my desk and came to a shocking realization.  I had two different shoes on.  They were both black, but one was clearly a leather dress shoe while the other was a converse tennis shoe.  I shoved my feet below my desk in embarrassment.  A while later, I took off for lunch and corrected my error.

When I got back, i quizzed people to see if they noticed.  Not one person had.  Not one.  After all, who looks at people’s shoes?  It reminds me of The Shawshank Redemption when he steals the warden’s shoes and walks back to his cell in them without anyone noticing.

I think the IT Service world sometimes sees the help desk like people’s shoes.  While the entire structure stands upon the help desk and it’s client relations, it doesn’t really get noticed.  It seems like the main reason it is there is to keep the rest of the body from stooping to floor-level and client interaction.  The whole body could be laying on the floor, all supporting all applications, passwords, hardware, etc, but instead they insert this little group that allows the entire organization to stand up and get away from those things.  Sometimes the whole body tries to move without taking the helpdesk with it, and the body falls on it’s face.  Then the entire body is on the floor again, everyone dealing with the customers.  It’s quite funny to picture someone who tries to walk without taking their feet with them.  Maybe what the rest of the body needs to realize is that if they would just ditch their pride and talk to their feet, they could walk without falling.  Most of they time the body just wants to stay off the floor anyway, they just don’t realize that the way to do that is through the helpdesk.  If the shoes go forward first and the body follows though, the whole organization can move quickly and easily without stumbling.

Temporary outage

Hey everyone. Last night I saw an update to Wordpress (the software that runs this blog) come across. Never having had problems before, I did the stupid thing and in the middle of doing other work, rushed through the update.

It overwrote my entire blog. Everything. If you came to my page yesterday, you may have noticed either a big nothing or something that looked almost, but not completely, entirely unlike my blog.

Luckily, everything in Wordpress is stored in a MySQL database. I reinstalled Wordpress, and then went through all the config files until I found the right pointer for the posts I had written. Bringing that back into the picture fixed everything. There are some scripts that were embedded in the sidebar that are now missing. I will have to redo all of those. However, this is nothing compared to the monumental loss I almost suffered.

I’m not angry about it. If I hadn’t been so careless I wouldn’t have lost anything. I guess I just needed an opportunity to get to know Wordpress a little better.

Sorry for the downtime.

I want a big freakin fan!

So my apartment sucks. Completely. The other day I took on the task of trying to fix the electrical wiring that made the light bulbs in the ceiling fan ridiculously dim (like 2 candles). While I was up there I noticed that a fan blade was bent, the motor clicked on every rotation, and it was missing way too many screws to be considered anything but lethal. In my frustration I ripped down the whole thing and left a few wires dangling from the ceiling until I could find a new fan to put up there.

With summer on the horizon, I decided I wanted a big fan to replace it with. Something that would keep us cool without having to buy another window air conditioner. I want a big freakin’ Fan.

I didn’t know what was out there.

Check out the fans at bigassfans.com. I mean, these aren’t really anything for my apartment, but as a man who loves a good bit of engineering I can really appreciate the equipment they have up there. Imagine a 24 foot diameter Fan! That might take up my whole crappy apartment!

These are amazing for industrial use. The point is, with the right blade and the right size, you don’t have to have it spin with an incredibly high RPM to get good airflow. Having done lots of aerodynamics experiments in my day, I can really appreciate the engineering behind their products.

Men like big things. I can’t help it.

This post was sponsored by BigAssFans.com.

The database world

I’m doing a lot of database work lately, mostly because I have a database class. At work we’re also implementing new helpdesk software that is of course database backed. We are also implementing a wiki to be searched by the helpdesk software. All in all, that’s 4 different database types. There’s SQL Server, MySQL, Access, and Oracle. I suppose you could argue that Access and SQL Server are one in the same, but in my mind Access destroys the international standard that is known as SQL.

Databases are difficult, no doubt about it. That’s what they’re made for. However, I’ve found Oracle to be a great program for high-end enterprise class databases. Once you get used to it, it just works. I’ve used MySQL too, but I’ve never actually USED it. It always runs in the background powering all my web 2.0 apps, like this blog and our wiki.

So our helpdesk software runs off of SQL server. drag. Our wiki runs off MySQL. I think we’ll set up the wiki on a separate box and just have the helpdesk software index it.

Cloaking? Doorway Pages? Google Death Penalty? So many terms!

Welcome to the wonderful world of computers and information technology. We in IT like to think that we’re all that and a bag of potato chips, so we come up with all this fancy terminology and acronyms to confuse the average Joe.

Well… the zoologists started it.

Probably not, but regardless of who started it, someone has to keep up with it! I periodically run into a new term I’ve never heard of and have to go to Google or Wikipedia within the next 2 minutes while the person is still talking just so I can respond intelligently. How annoying is that? Wouldn’t it be nice if we had a way to know them all?

Enter the Apogee Search Engine Marketing Glossary. You can find all the latest web terminology as well as a host of tips on how to help your site and keep it from harm. I myself learned a lot about the Google Death Penalty. Apparently it is where Google removes your website from the Google search index.  This can be permanent, or it could involve a lot of fighting to get back.  You’ll be fine as long as you don’t use some very unorthodox linking methods, but it did happen to the German BMW Corporate site.

Apogee is one of the 25 largest search engine marketing firms in the world, and they know their stuff! I found this site very useful, and it earned it’s way into a Firefox bookmark.

Check out SEO in Austin for more information, and check up on the Apogee Search Blog.  In the meantime, do you know what a flog is?

This post was sponsored by Apogee Search.