I've been 35 for almost a month now. I'm working at a place with linux-only guys, who think that the best solution is always free software. I feel like the old unix dude with the suspenders who still reads a.s.r. I feel ancient, as I've worked with big iron, or at least medium iron since my first job, and the guys who work in the IT department here are used to virtualization on intel platforms (so, machines considered big for their time, but not SPARCs or RISC machines).

Benny pestered me incessantly about what I wanted for my birthday. I couldn't figure it out; I was (and still kind of am) on the dark side right now, about a 4 on my personal 1-10 depression scale. It doesn't affect my ability to work, but it numbs and dulls my senses. Like I should've been elated to get the job I have now (which is almost perfect), but I wasn't. I couldn't express that level of joy. I'm still not quite there, but I'm digging out of it slowly but surely. Anyway, the day before my birthday, I figured out what it was I wanted. I wanted a guitar and lessons.

We headed to Guitar Center and I found a decent guitar, and we walked out with a guitar, case, book, picks, and an extra set of strings. I called up the music store in Castle Rock (which is where I work, 17 minutes from where we live, just north of Sedalia), and started lessons last week. I suck, but I'm sucking less at it every day. I practice until my fingers are tender, as many days as I can actually get the time, and I figure that has to be good enough.

I don't want to be the next Joni Mitchell, or even Lisa Loeb. I just want to make music, in the way I still take photos because I want people to see what I see in the world.

If anyone is looking for a 6-month gig in the Castle Rock, CO area, let me know. I'm looking for a mini-me, who can help me get the alarms in line. Someone who groks windows servers and javascript, who has a decent grasp of monitoring and alarming (snmp and nms experience would be nice, but not necessary.) I'm currently putting people through the "Chris test" by having my boss interview them first, and looking for specific skills later.

Hey, for anyone who still reads this. Rosetta Code's doing awesome, content-wise, and we're starting to implement Semantic MediaWiki. (To what end? Not sure. I've got a couple ideas, but I'm more an opportunist than a front-end planner.) I've also been shooting a bunch of photos and putting them up online--even photos that aren't cosplay, if you can imagine that. (Which you probably can; I doubt many who read this were following me on Flickr back when I went to Anime Weekend Atlanta for the first time in 2007. If you want to read what I'm really thinking, either follow me on Multiply, or see the same stuff over on LiveJournal--but get your adblock armor up; it's a scary place. I'm also on Twitter, if you really care. I'm a minimal participant, really.

If I show up as a fan for you here, I do read your journals; the My Amigos RSS feed is still useful.

Why this collection of links to me at other places? Easy; I know there are still some of you here who never showed up in those other places, and I miss the interactions. I'd post my blogs here, too, but Slashdot has relegated itself to an incredible degree of backwater status. I was lucky to find the "Write in Journal" link. I'm tempted to find some Perl script to have it suck in blog posts via RSS, and post them to Slashdot. (That's how I'm inducting my blog posts into Facebook, too.)

I miss what this place used to be. I miss the people this place used to have. I still see some of them on two or three other social networks, and some of the bonds there are tighter than they ever were here, but there's still a bunch of you missing.

I gave my notice for the contracting company. I'm going back into NMS with a passion that can't be denied.

Just 2 more weeks of waking up when other people are coming home from work.

Just 2 more weeks until I can take the dog to the dog park after work, or go to the normal park with her on her leash (we're right near Chatfield, and they have a great dog park, I've been told.

Just. 2. more. weeks.

I just got a phone call from one of the world's leading experts in food safety to ask me if I'd be interested in writing a review article for one of the leading publications in the field. He said that one of the world's other leading experts mentioned me as a good person for the job, and the rest of the editorial board (all high power people) agreed.

Naturally, I said yes.

What's strikes me as funny about this is that the narrow technical field in question (cold plasma) isn't the the other narrow technical field where I'm (ahem) already one of the world's leading experts (irradiation). [I always feel strange saying that w.l.e. bit, but it's true, so I kind of have to accept it.]

This tells me that I've made decent progress toward having two separate feathers in my cap, maybe three depending on how you define them. Coming today as it does, this happening is doubly, even triply bizarre.

It's a strange life I lead, I'll tell you that much.

It was April 23, 2008 that I took over as Acting Head Honcho of that miserable, hideous nest of vipers. After five and a half months, I'd been used up and spit out. I was done with it, and walked away.

The experience made me reconsider a lot of things - about myself, my job, my career arc, what I wanted out of life. Although I'd never really examined it, I'd grown accustomed to people doing what I wanted. It always just seemed to happen that I found myself in charge; people deferred to me, looked to me for guidance, clarity, focus. That would be "leadership", I suppose.

It was quite the shock when I found myself amid people who not only didn't magically follow my lead. The active resistance and slanderous backstabbing was a new experience for me. Although I wanted to prove myself to the higher-ups, I truly went into that environment with the intent to help. However, my motives were assumed to be as venal and corrupt as they were accustomed to. My abilities were dismissed, my skills were denigrated.

That hurt. It took a while for me to regain ground with self-confidence and belief in the value of what I'm doing here. Even with time, it took a lot of effort, on my part and from others, to get me close to the level of performance I was at before.

Why re-hash all of this?

Because we've gone through a re-organization, and I've taken over one of the newly re-formed departments. It's on a temporary, Acting Head Honcho basis. When they open it up, I'll apply and probably get the job.

Why do this? Career management. Self-defense. To prove something to myself.

If someone has to hold the reins of power in my environment, I'd rather it be me than someone with a grudge against me.

So Ben (el Husband) is building/has built a CNC router using Ubuntu and a couple of pieces of software, a CAD program (for which he paid), a CNC controller program (which I can't remember if it was free as in beer or not), a tiny motherboard, and a couple of other pieces of actual hardware for which he paid a decent amount of money (but not enough to justify actually buying a mill the size he needs). Motors, threaded rod, etc. If you want to see, he's got a video on youtube linked from the woodshop blog showing it in action.

We've had problems with ubuntu deciding to boot from the usb stick, partially because Ubuntu decided it didn't want to shut down properly, and corrupted libraries, and someone decided that certain useful utilities (say, fsck) didn't need to be statically linked, which made it rather unhappy to work with. Ubuntu has been reinstalled, and he's got a .dmg on his ibook (my old ibook which still runs, and well) that he keeps at the shop, as backup. Because he has to. He was trying to install some packages to make his life a little easier (his BACulator, new version of gcc, some other stuff) yesterday, and the automounter kept complaining about ... something. The error message was Linuxy, by which I mean wordy and not very useful. I got this email tonight:

As a programmer and a unix admin, he gets a little upset.

It's here, unpacked but not yet up and running. Spent some time last night backing up the old one. At first I started copying individual folders onto a flash drive, then went for the easy route. I plugged a 700GB drive into a spare USB port and said, "Copy C:", then went off to have dinner.

It didn't work, naturally. Files in use, bizarre error messages, etc. So, I had to select files and subfiles for users, program files, all the photos from our digital camera, games, etc. Everything I've ever done for the last 16 years - my PhD, my wife's Master's, nine jobs between the two of us, two apartments, two houses, three cities, four kids, two churches, three public radio stations, innumerable committees, volunteer organizations, etc., etc., etc. - all of it comes to about 28GB. Including the program files for WordPerfect, Neverwinter Nights, Half-Life, Nethack, etc., etc., etc. which I don't use anymore.

Once the new machine is ready, I'll plug this drive in, copy over what I need as I need it. After a month or so, it will be gathering dust again on the shelf.

Our household budget is still running on QuattroPro. I made the switch to Excel at work years ago. That will be a project of top priority, since I don't want to install QuattroPro on the new machine. There's no point.

After something like 7 years, we're upgrading our computer. The new machine is one of these: Pentium E5400(2.70GHz) 4GB DDR2 750GB NVIDIA GeForce 7050 Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit. Monitor, keyboard & mouse will be carried over.

By modern standards, it's a decent machine for home use, light bookkeeping, light gaming. By the standards of the machine it will replace, my wife and I use, it's the Enterprise-D. This will be a huge step up for us. I should say for her, really, though, it's become my wife's computer almost exclusively, since I tend to use my netbook + WiFi. We bought a separate computer for the kids a few months ago, also with a WiFi adapter. The combination of going from dial-up to high speed cable internet plus the wireless router my brother-in-law gave us for Christmas a year ago has changed everything about how we do things.

What finally prompted us to scratch together the money for this upgrade was Plants vs. Zombies. My wife has gotten addicted to it, but our machine was having problems with it. Crashes meant I had to turn off the 3D acceleration and downgrade some of the other video acceleration, which makes it jerky to play.

This machine was perfectly adequate to run Age of Empires, Neverwinter Nights, and other games that are more complicated than PvZ, but they stress it in different ways. We discussed the possibility of just taking the machine out of service for a while so I could wipe the drive and reinstall WinXP. There are about a billion demands on my time at the moment, though, and finding the time to do that was an ongoing problem. The machine is old enough that replacing it is not out of line.

I have no idea what we're going to do with 750GB, though.

Just got off the phone with someone who wanted to talk over the possibility of a grant application. As we talked, I relayed facts when I knew them, expressed opinions and what they were based on, and made speculations (clearly identified as such). We each brought unique info and perspectives to the conversation.

At the end, although we'd pooled our knowledge, it didn't seem to me like we were any farther along toward any kind of a resolution or positive outcome. Still, he'd said mid-conversation and again at the end that he really appreciated the opportunity to tap into my "wisdom".

Wisdom? Hell, I don't know any more about it than you do. I just made sure to read the fine print in the documentation and draw a few pretty obvious inferences.

I don't know. Maybe that's what passes for wisdom these days, simple attention to detail and the willingness to look past the smoke and mirrors. People see a couple of million dollars hanging out there, ripe for the plucking, they get all excited. They don't think to look for the worm in the apple, or the thorns on the rose, or for any other metaphors for "this is more complicated than it seems".

Ah, I just found the website that covers this situation. I knew I'd bookmarked it: "No One Knows What the F*** They're Doing (or: The 3 Types of Knowledge)". Read it. Very insightful.

I've been navigating through a reorganization at work. There's been a lot of uncertainty, rumors, and mixed signals. In particular, one guy that I supervise has made it clear that he doesn't want to work for me directly. He doesn't care for my style, my approach, my personality, etc. I think he's afraid of me or intimidated by me. In any case, he wants to work for another guy.

The guy he wants to work for doesn't do very much. I am currently without any technical support, and continue to have lots of administrative work to get done. Frankly, I not only need a senior support person more, it's a little silly that I'm the leader of this project and I have to put up with a string of low-level people, temps, summer students, part-timers, etc.

However, the last thing I need is to have my support person be sullen and resentful. I've tried to be as accommodating, reasonable and personally supportive as I can, but sometimes we are called on to do things that aren't our first choice.

Today, he initiated a conversation where he said how unhappy he was about the uncertainties of this coming reorg. He hinted that he might go elsewhere if he didn't get the job assignment he wanted.

I told him that uncertainty is hard on everyone, that I'd been part of negotiations to sort out work assignments that would make the maximum number of people maximally happy and/or satisfied. I told him that the plan we'd worked out was a good one, but that it might get thrown out the window by someone farther up the chain, in which case we would either take it and make do, or leave to find work elsewhere.

At some point in the conversation, he got a surprised look and said, "In all the times we've had this conversation, I've always tried to be up front about telling you what I want. I guess it never really occurred to me that you are kind of in the same boat with all this uncertainty. I never really thought to ask you what *you* want."

So, I told him. I told him in plain language exactly what I was looking for in a support person, both in skill set and temperament, and why I thought he'd be good for the job. I also made it clear that I understood he didn't want to work for me. If it would result in him turning sullen and dour, then our working relationship would degenerate until it would be worse that useless for both of us.

The expression of amazement and astonishment on his face was remarkable. All along, through everything, he's seen me as... what? A robot? A blue box on a management chart? A mannequin in the corner office? Certainly not as a person. It was clearly a new paradigm for him to consider that I might have some hopes and desires, some wants and needs that would either be fulfilled or dashed, depending on how things turn out.

He had been concerned solely with his own happiness. I'm not going to believe that his is now concerned with *my* happiness, but I think that he is now at least *aware* of my happiness, or lack thereof.

That's called empathy, or the beginnings of it.

Something to think about as I go for a walk over lunchtime, enjoying the spring-like weather.

Especially after seeing the commercial they're running now. "Did you know that there are germs everywhere, including on the bottle of liquid soap?" Why yes, Lysol, I did. I knew there are germs on top of the soap dispenser. But you see, after I put my hand on top of the soap dispenser, soap is dispensed into my other hand and I WASH MY HANDS WITH SOAP. Holy crap, people. Unless you've got an automatic faucet, you probably pick more germs up from turning off your faucet than you would from the pump on the soap dispenser.

That word looks wrong. You know when you say or write something multiple times and it just looks wrong? The number '1' looks and sounds wrong at the end of my shift because I say it so much. Whatever. Back to my rant.

Lysol kills germs. That's fine. Except that telling people there are germs on their liquid soap bottle on the spot they use to dispense soap isn't really a useful observation. And really, there didn't need to be a 'fix' for that for consumers. Life wasn't meant to be lived in a sterile operating theater. it was meant to be lived alongside and in opposition to the rest of the living things that live around us.

Gah.

Like, twenty pounds or so.

So "that day" is coming up on Sunday. You know, February 14th. We normally don't celebrate with what you would call 'normal' gifts. Ben said he'd have gotten me 'flours' but he didn't want to go to Whole Foods. He was going to get some white, wheat and rye, and some yeast, and it would be a bouquet of flours. I'd have loved that.

But no, what he did was awesomer. He bought me a decent point-n-shoot, which I've been wanting for a while now, and a microwave (because our last one was sold with the house -- it was mounted over the stove), and three paperback novels. I've been wanting to read "Stupid reading" for a little while now, too. You know, the kind of thing you read when you just want to read something. Mysteries, mostly. He got me a Jonathan Kellerman and a Dean Koontz Odd Thomas book, and an Iris Schrier, I believe. Those were the sweetest gifts he could've gotten for me. Not anything sentimental, not something that will be dead in a week. Something useful and something I've been wanting, actually wanting.

I'm not recommending that everyone get their SO a microwave and a camera and three paperbacks. Or that you get them Chick-fil-a and leave it in the car clipped to their badge for them to take to work. But they were the perfect thing, and the most romantic thing (for me) that could happen on or around v-day.

I'm obviously easily impressed, though. :P

This week has kinda sucked for me sleepwise. I was up until 2pm on Sunday and Monday, as we were looking for places to rent and moving into the one we liked. For normal sleepers, this is staying up from 6am one day until 4am the next day. Two days in a row. I got maybe 8 hours sleep between the two days (or I guess three days, if you want to look at it that way).

But!

We got a cute place in Sedalia, CO. It's on a guy's HUUUGE tract of land (he has a polo field on it. and the horses to go with that.) and is a small house, but we've met our neighbors, well.. one of them. She's a spinner and a weaver (which is cool), and she and her husband have 4 rather large dogs. Nulla played a little with them, but she's not allowed off her little cable because, well, she's a shiba. Shibas are notorious for deciding to run and run and run and laugh at you when you call them. She zipped out the door when we were staying with a friend and into the busy road (2 lanes each way with a median) -- Wadsworth around 470 for those of you in/near denver.

We spent Monday digging through boxes looking for the &^#*@ remote to the bed -- It's a sleep number bed, which we've had absolutely zero issues with, which seems to be the exception, as I've seen many many bad reviews online. Our stuff is in storage in the springs, which makes it kind of irritating to get our stuff, but whatever. We won't be taking a whole lot out of storage, as the house is only about 700-ish square feet, but we got Benny's big chair, and the bed, and the dining room table. We picked up a few boxes of kitchen stuff, but this'll be one of those long drawn out things where we pick things up piecemeal. There's not going to be much time to set up housekeeping this week, since I'm working and then we're headed down to the ranch to build skeinwinders on Sunday. It'll be interesting to see if Ben installs the shower before we leave... the landlord bought the shower and is paying Ben to install it, but we'll definitely benefit from that, since what's in the bathroom now is a claw-foot tub with a shower sprayer (and no shower curtain) which makes a HUGE mess. We've been un-synchronized sleepwise because of the moving and the going-to-home-depot-with-the-landlord, and will probably stay un-synched for another week or so while he does things like get firewood from the guy down the road, and working at the ranch. It sucks, but you do what you can.

Good game, good commercials. I went into this rooting for the Colts, but I had to respect the Saints for the come from behind effort. It wasn't that the Colts choked; far from it, I thought they played very well. The Saints simply dominated, with tight, precise playing.

Well done New Orleans.