It’s the New Year and things are busy.  There are no major projects I’m working on, no big upcoming events to prep for . . . it’s just a mountain of little things that are time intensive. 

I need to find out why my clients don’t always get all the information from the DHCP server when they ask for it.

I have to run more networking cable through the ceiling tomorrow as well.  This isn’t hard, just time consuming. 

I finally got our firewall to let me upload stuff to our web server.  The SQUID proxy server had a problem . . . well it’s a little complicated.  Suffice it to say it’s all better now.  I have upload all of Novembers sermons again, now I have to work on December and the first of January.

I’m behind in master audio CD’s, but I think I can get most of that punched out by Monday of next week. 

I need to finish cleaning out my office of old equipment that we’ll never use again (like 128 memory sticks, and 2 gig hard drives, and old NT servers that still work but . . . why would we need ANOTHER server . . . especially an NT 4.0 server).   

I have a growing pile of paper work that needs to be organized into file folders. 

And I need to put together a proposal for a battery backup / power conditioner for the servers (as we keep having hard drive problems and I think it’s due to the poor power in the Front Office). 

Nothing major, just lots of little time intensive things (along with the regular weeks worth of work) means that I must manage my time very carefully. 

For instance right now: Big Blue is defragging so I can do more audio editing, I’m looking at a Laptop to see why it suddenly decided to run slowly, I’m waiting for a virus scan on PEARL to finish so I can enter the Wednesday songs, and I’m writing a blog post. 

Large Crowds put me off.

I mean, just if I don’t have anything to do.  If I’m suppose to ‘mingle’.

What do you talk about ?  I don’t get small talk, I just don’t. 

Is anyone else like this ?

It’s the church wide Christmas party tonight.  I started some Christmas music, got a mic working for Pastor, and now I’m sitting in the sound booth waiting for this thing to be over. 

I occasionally go down and talk to a few people in the crowd that I know . . . then I come back up here. 

I just don’t care about what your child spat up this morning, or how the Colts are doing this season, and I certainly don’t want to try and figure out what’s wrong with your printer by you describing things to me that just don’t make sense (you don’t need to oil your printer, Windows didn’t tell you to do that, so please stop saying that it did). 

Does anyone else feel ridiculously  uncomfortable in situations where you have to mingle by your self in a crowd of people and make small talk ?

But there are good times too.  I had a good talk with Mr. Eddie Owens (he’s like my assistant in the A-v dept. . . he does pretty much anything that needs to be done).  He gave me a Christmas stocking with an ornament in it with his picture and a recorded message.  Very nice !

Many of my friends are here, and I’ve been talking with them. 

It’s just making the small talk that . . . I dunno . . . I just don’t get it.  I cant do it well.  And it drives me crazy when I have to.

In other news, I’ve been playing Left 4 Dead with DoctorK and The1Shagg lately (each in separate games) and it’s been great fun !  We need to all get together and play !  I also haven’t tried verses mode (where you play as the zombies against, I assume, human players as the humans in the game).  When I first got the game, I thought that $60 was a bit high.  The game was uncomplicated, simple, with very little depth as far as the story goes.  You’re 4 humans escaping from 4 different locations (4 different movies as it were).  But it’s so very much fun in it’s arcade like simplicity.  You work together to stay alive . . . you truly have to work together to stay alive . . . and I think that is the best part of  the game. 

Now I’m going to try and slip out with out anyone noticing me. 

It’s been a while since I posted any pictures.  This is mostly due to the fact that I have to format the pictures, save a smaller version (to display on the page for you to click on), and then upload the whole mess over a slow connection.  And lately, there hasn’t been much time for picture taking. 

But lately the business has been limited to small crisis’s.  Little things like getting ready for the staff Christmas party,  or cleaning up my office and getting rid of old computer parts, or . . . you know . . .  coming into work to find a server burned up (literally).  Little things like that. 

You know it’s going to be a bad morning when you open the door to the server room and our rushes 80 degree plus degree air, along with the smell or burning metal and plastic and ozone.  Yes, the magic smoke has left some of the components of the server.  However, with a new power supply the green light on the mother board lights up and we get half way through SCSI BIOS boot before it freezes !  So maybe there is hope yet for recovering at least one of the hard drives. 

Anywho, I decided to make a separate page for the pictures and such.  That way they can be a bit bigger (and I don’t have to make small versions as well as large versions and upload them both) and I can put comments with each pictures and not have to worry about the column width or anything like that.  I figured I’d do a few today, and a few more tomorrow.  I need to take some pictures of my fish too.

So, if you’re ready for a bit of load time, click the link below to proceed !

Click HERE !

Well a lot of time has gone by since I last updated the blog.  That’s because I’ve had like ZERO free time . . . well not counting the couple of hours I spend playing Civilization Revolution in the evenings . .  . but by that time of day I don’t feel like writing an update to the Blog.

So, big things that have happened in the past week or so . . .

1.)  Monday before last (August 4th), I got a new fish tank.  And not just any fish tank, a 65 gallon (fresh water) fish tank !  I bought it for a good price from a family in the church who is getting a new salt water tank.  This thing is HUGE ! 
     They even gave me all their ‘old’ fish . . . being freshwater fish they wouldn’t live very long in a salt water tank.  So I’ve got like 20 of them !  Moving the tank was . . . fun.  Fun in that I’m-glad-it’s-over-now kind of way. 
     But everything is set up, the water is all PH balanced and dechlorinated and conditioned and all that good stuff with the fish now swimming around happily in the tank.  I only have a low quality picture of it I took with my phone before there were any fish in it, but I’ll take some new ones soon. 
     They only problems I’m having are that the water is still a bit cloudy (even after cycling for 5 days and 3 days now with fish), and I’m getting foam at the top of the tank from the air bubbles from the under gravel filter.  I’ve tested the water for Nitrates, Nitrites, PH, and just about every other thing you can think of . . . even had the fish store people test it too . . . everything looks fine.  I’ve turned the bubbles down to a bare minimum and STILL I get foam at the top of the tank.
     Oh well, it’ll probably clear up on it’s own.

This past Thursday and Friday was the Willow Creek Conference, but I’ll make a separate post about that.

Also, INATSM 7.5 is this weekend.  INATSM is our semi annual youth retreat, it stands for It’s Not About The Sound Man (which is a lyric from a song that Pastor Barry used in the first one . . . talking about all the things that Christianity is NOT about and focusing on what it IS about . . . growing closer to God). 
     For a retreat that’s ‘not about the sound man’ . . . there sure is a lot of stuff for the sound man to do lol.  We take a small portable sound system out there (two subs, two full range speakers, a 12 channel sound board, amps, a few monitor wedges, CD player, laptop) and that’s about it. This time, however, the camp where we have the retreat has installed a video projector . . . so we’re bringing another computer to do the words for Praise and Worship with. 
     It’s a lot to set up and take down, and a long way to drive (well, only about 30 minutes truly . . . I just drive it several times before the weekend is over) . . . but the youth, and me too, always come feeling like we got closer to God.  And I suppose that’s what it’s all about. 
    I may take my 360 along and play some Civilization Revolution too.

Which brings me to the last part of the update . . . Civilization Revolution.  What a cool game.  It’s SOOO nice to NOT play a first person shooter once in a while. The1Shagg and DrJones both have it, but we have yet to play a game together (all three of us in one game).  While it took a bit to get the finer points of city management down (even now I still find out things that I didn’t know), and sometimes you have to be careful look as the stats of a unit before you sent it out to battle . . . it’s a very fun and simple game to pick up and learn.  A general co-op type multiplayer (where the humans are playing against the computer) takes about 2-3 hours to finish.  The maps appear to be generated new each time (I haven’t seen a repeated one yet anyways and sometimes the resource allocation can be a little uneven or spread out so much that you cant take advantage of anything).  In short, a very good game.  Simplified from the PC versions of Civilization, but still requires a bit of a learning curve.  I have beat the game on level one and two on the difficulty setting, there are 5 total.  Number 3 difficulty (king I think) is giving me some difficulty lol.

Friday was my day off this weekend and I spent it doing very little of anything productive.  I did a bit of laundry, watched about 5 episodes of Voyager (all of them were new to me . . . I must have missed like 2 seasons worth of the shows in college), did the dishes, cleaned a bit, ran a few errands, and played some Rainbow 6 Vegas.  All in all a very nice day off of resting . . . which I have needed to do of late. 

I’ve been fighting ear and sinus infections on and off for the last month and a half.  That being said, it is spring time and things are beginning to bloom . . . which could be helping things to get all clogged up and what not.  The most annoying part is when my ears get clogged up . . . or more specifically when ONE ear gets clogged up and the other is not.  My left ear feels full of fluid and is all mufley . . . but the right ear is fine.  It’s driving me INSANE !  Band practice this morning nearly sent me into fits.  Oh well, a nice decongestant and a hot shower will help clear it up by morning. 

Bailey (my dog) had another seizure last Monday morning.  I was just waking up.  He had been getting in my face for about 5 minutes (I thought because he had to pee).  Then, as I was getting up to let him out to pee, he started walking against the wall (leaning against it) and then walked right through his water bowl and food bowl.  Then he started breathing in huffs and I knew what was happening.

I grabbed him and made him lay down on the carpet while laying down next to him and . . . well kind of hugging him.  This I do because 1.) he likes to have his head held when the seizures happen (this is why he was getting in my face earlier) and 2.) if they get violent he needs to be held to keep from hurting himself. 

He started tensing up, legs strait out and back and neck arching, and his breathing was labored and came in huffs.  This lasted about 30 seconds.  Then he kind of started twitching and wiggling back and forth.  This lasted for about a minute maybe.  Then the twitching became more spaced out but more violent, and this turned into violent throws that I had to hold him against me to keep him from hurting himself.  This lasted about 45 seconds to a minute . . . which seams much longer when it’s happening. 

The throws died down to just tense twitching and, about 2 or 3 minutes later, he was just a bit tense.  A couple of minutes after that he was able to walk again. 

I took him to the vet again that morning, who drew blood to check for liver / kidney / metabolism problems.  Finding none, we put him on a regiment of (and forgive me if I spell this wrong) Phenobarbital for about a week.  It’s a very low dose, but it’s suppose to help keep his brain activity from getting to over excited.  Its had the effect of making him pretty dopey (not so much sleepy, just slow to respond . . . almost like being a bit drunk).  His walking is a bit worse on the Pheno . . . but we’re going to try this for a bit and then reevaluate the dosing after a bit. 

The dog is none the worse for the ware and now spends his days sleeping on the couch near the living window (in earshot of the TV . . . which is left on CNNHD or Spike for him to have some noise in the house). 

In other news . . .

- I’m frustrated with the Single Player of Rainbow 6 Vegas.  I keep getting stuck in places in the game and end up playing the same section over and over and OVER again until I get frustrated and just turn the game off.  Because of this I’m not very far in the game.  I dunno . . . in Multi player I’m usually in the top three in a match.  Single player, however, forced you to find the one or two ways that the designers intended you to do things.  I end up playing the part several times before I get what I was suppose to do . . . which frustrates me to NO END !

- Pastor Eddie Turner is speaking at Church tomorrow morning.  I like him . . . he’s funny, direct, knowledgeable, and brings things into perspective. 

- Dad and I worked on the Firewall / Internet Filter today.  We finally got a Comcast tech who was knowledgeable and actually HELPED us with things outside of the Modem/IP Gateway.  He helped me figure out why, when I changed the LAN IP address of the Modem, it stopped responding to login requests.  He helped me figure out which IP addresses in our Static Block (dolled out by Comcast) were the Gateway, Broadcast, and actual address we could assign the Firewall/Filter. 

And we got the firewall to actually start passing data between the modem and network.  The firewall is a Linux box running Dan’s Guardian (with Squid Proxy to take care of the NAT) and . . . ummm  . . . I forget what the actual Firewall service that’s running is called.  Dans Guardian is the filter (to block bad content) . . . but isn’t blocking it at the moment. 

However it will filter if we tell all the browsers to use a proxy and send them to port 8080 . . . so we just need to get the transparent proxy to do it on the box for us so that it’s all automatic and such.  In short . . . this is a big step as we have been working on this thing on and off for like months ! 

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