I just realized I’m scheduled for a doctor’s appointment at 1:30 that requires me to fast until then. D’oh! Fasting is Big Sux. I always try to get an 8:30 appointment if I’ve got to do it, but in the holiday rush, I missed the set up for this one. To add insult to injury, I was hoping to get my driver’s license renewed this morning.

I can just see myself in the new picture I’ll have to cart around for the next five years. There I am, gaunt and surly, looking like I want to take the photographer’s head off. Maybe I’ll even be drooling, or foaming at the mouth.

I bet I become part of the lineup for a dozen petty crimes because of this mugshot. Heh.

For those of you missing my daily (and sometimes hourly) rant, I’ve been incredibly busy with work the past few days. I’m beginning to wonder if this is a taste of how the whole year might become, though I’d always rather have things to do than be bored.

I spent a spontaneous Saturday having a blast with Kelly and Hallie. We drove downtown to the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences, where we spent a memorable few hours watching Hallie gleefully explore. She LOVED it, and we did, too! I think it’s the most fun she’s ever had indoors.

And what a place for her to play! So much to learn, so many people to see. And it’s all free! Kelly wisely proclaimed the Museum will become a weekly routine for her and Hallie.

Saturday night we were pressed for dinner options, so I suggested we head downtown to the New Oakwood Cafe for something different. The Oakwood Cafe is in a dive building downtown, bordering New Bern Avenue near the Governor’s Mansion. It’s family-run Argentinian restaurant with some great food at good prices. Twenty seconds after sitting down, Kelly and I both agreed we were glad we were there. The service leaves something to be desired (the owner’s daughters aren’t the most motivated servers we’ve ever seen), but the food is great. We had our dinner and had Hallie back at home to make her usual bedtime. No fuss, no muss.

Sunday I spent the whole day locked in a hotel conference room for a sales seminar. Woo woo. It was interesting and engaging, but I would have greatly appreciated more breaks. I get antsy after being around the same crowd of people for too long and need to disappear every now and then (God, how did I ever survive three naval deployments?). If I was a smoker, the nicotine withdrawl would’ve had me ready to throttle someone, I’m sure.

The seminar continued today, when I got to play the role of an IT manager in a scenario. It’s a in Uncategorized | 341 Words | Comment

After seeing Steve Wills talking about LocalFeeds, I made the appropriate changes to my GeoURL tags to allow my weblog to show up in the Raleigh area listings.

If you’re not using GeoURL, or LocalFeeds, you should consider it. It provides an easy way to find your blogging neighbors, and even read what they’re writing. It’s Kewl With A “K.”

To the folks visiting from the LocalFeeds site, I say “howdy, neighbor!”

The hotel where we are having our office conference had payphones in the hallway until this morning. Some time during the night or morning, a Bellsouth tech came in and ripped them out, literally leaving dangling wires in the walls.

It all comes as a result of Bellsouth exiting the payphone business, deciding things are going mobile. Good bet, but the old payphones are going to be missed. When you needed a phone (and didn’t have your mobile phone), it was nice to be able to find one.

Up until recently, you could buy your own Bellsouth phone from this website, though they seem to have sold out now. I’m kind of on the fence for wanting one of these. I’d like to own a piece of history, but I’m not sure I’d like the accompanying germs from a public phone. 🙂

I heard on the radio this morning how Bush planned to attack Iraq right from the start. Former Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill went on 60 Minutes and made the claim that Iraq was the topic of Bush’s first National Security Council meeting.

Doing a search on news.google.com, I see hardly any play of this story on any major U.S. news sites. What’s up with that? Where is the outrage?

I keep seeing more and more evidence that the attack on Iraq was contrived. I’ve already seen evidence that the WTC attacks were staged, ludicrous as it may sound to some. Someone should be held accountable for misleading the country.

There are questions that need to be asked about the so-called threats our country has allegedly been facing. Its a shame our press is too pathetic to ask them.

On our walk Sunday at Lake Johnson park, I passed a familiar face. Gordon Young, guru developer from my HAHT Software days, was walking with his wife at the same time. Turns out he’s the cofounder of a new start-up, Serenus, and liking it, apparently.

It was also nice getting the scoop on the old HAHTsters I used to work with. For instance, Alex Herring is developing games now, with Tim Sampair on his team. John Creamer is writing short stories at his crib downtown. We also talked about the need to revive “beer nights.”

It was nice to see him again, after what is fast approaching ten years away from HAHT. Where does the time go?

If you’ve got the scoop on other HAHT (or Q+E) people, drop a line below.

We’re getting some light snow this morning and Hallie is going nuts. She wants to go outside so badly. She keeps repeating “snow! Out! Side! Cold! Wet!”

I wish I could stay home and play with her but duty calls. Work gets in the way of everything.

For a challenge, take a look at my weather graphs and see if you can tell what time it started snowing.

Just got back from hearing an outstanding presentation on voice over IP, provided by Jon Carnes at the TriLUG meeting. Jon was preaching the religion of VoIP, and the congregation was in rapt attention. I’ve never been to a Linux user group meeting that attracted as much attention as Jon’s. It just reinforces my decision to jump into this technology.

I’ll put together an Asterisk class for next month and show people some REALLY cool stuff. Who knows? I might get some consulting work out of it.

Not ten minutes after I wrote about tripped breakers, the inevitable happened. Four space heaters and a dozen PCs and monitors tripped a 60 amp breaker.

On the plus side, we figured out that the air conditioning is ALSO on, so we’re getting closer to getting things above freezing.