A group of former diplomats and retired military have banded together to call for regime change in America. The group, called Diplomats and Military Commanders for Change, includes top-ranking generals, admirals, CIA officials, and diplomats, both Republicans and Democrats. The group will release an official statement Wednesday morning.

Bill Harroup, former U.S. ambassador to Israel, summed it up here:

“I really am essentially a Republican. I voted for George Bush’s father, and I voted for George Bush,” Harrop said. “But what we got was not the George Bush we voted for.”

The group includes former ambassadors Jeffrey Davidow, William DePree, Charles Freeman Jr., William Harrop, Arthur Hartman, H. Allen Holmes, Samuel Lewis, Princeton Lyman, Jack Matlock Jr., Donald McHenry, Richard Murphy, David Newsom, Phyllis Oakley, John Reinhardt, Ronald Spiers, Nicholas Veliotes and Alexander Watson; and Adm. William Crowe, Gen. Joseph Hoar and Adm. Stansfield Turner.

Hmm. Perhaps they’re on to something.

If putting together and teaching my Asterisk class on Saturday wasn’t stressful enough, I face a very important week this week.

Monday morning, I spend a few hours talking with a prospective employer. Later that afternoon, I speak with another, this time by phone. Somewhere in between there, I finish up ordering utilities for the new ‘crib.

Tuesday at noon, we sell our house. As I recall, we’ve got it easy, with just a few papers to sign. Our buyer, however, faces the chore of plowing through a mountain of paperwork.

Just when we think we’ve avoided that mountain of paperwork, we get one of our own to plow through. Wednesday, we purchase our new house, and spend a big chunk of the afternoon signing papers. Yay. But at least we get a house in return. Not a bad trade, huh?

Thursday morning, we wait around at our new home for our new refrigerator to be delivered. The rest of the day is spent finishing up whatever packing is left.

Saturday, we move. After that, it’s going to be “now where did I put that … ” for the next few weeks.

Incidentally, there are no guarantees as to when broadband will be active at the new home of MT.Net. Thus, you may go into withdrawl for the few days it takes until we’re online again. We could avoid it completely, too, but I want you to be aware.

Blogging will take a backseat in all this, of course. I’ll drop in when I can. Ciao!

I’m doing some work to get the utilities connected at our new home. The gas service, PSNC, has absolutely no information on how to establish service on their homepage. Even the electric utility Progress Energy has new service information easily found on their site. PSNC makes Progress seem actually clueful about the Internet, in spite of the silly dash in Progress’ domain name.

Why can’t companies get a clue about how their sites should be used? The first thing a potential new customer is going to do is try to order new service. Why is this so hard to figure out?

We’ll see how the other utilities stack up as I move through the list.

It seems my class went over well. In other words, it went well over the alloted time (ha!). Thank you, thank you very much.

In all seriousness, it seems the attendees ate it up. There was a room full of about 30 people, and they all seemed interested in what Asterisk has to offer. I began with an overview of Voice Over IP and how it came about, and filled the second half of the class with a look under the hood of Asterisk.

I talked straight for four hours. My throat is sore, and I’m beat. But I lit the fire under many new Asterisk users, I had fun, and learned a thing or two myself. It took a lot of work, but if 30 people are willing to give up four hours of their Saturday morning to hear me drone on about software, I hope I gave them all they wanted to hear.

Thanks to Ryan Leathers and Global Knowledge for allowing us to use their excellent training facility. If there is interest in an “advanced” class, I hope we can use it again!

Dear Jen,

Please do not send me any more invitations to visit your website. I know you’re new to this online dating thing and that your email account isn’t functioning properly or whatnot, but the first five hundred messages you sent me got that point across.

No, I won’t look at your webcam, and I’m not interested in your profile. Please don’t contact me again.

Sincerely,
Mark
Continue reading →

I’m off now to teach my Asterisk class at Global Knowledge. I’ve got no idea who might show up, which is one of the bad things about not collecting any money for a class. Not that I would collect anything – this is strictly a gift for the user group. And it’s great practice for me as a trainer.

I don’t have much to show other than remote logins to my home computer. We’ll see if that’s enough to wow people.

See ya in a few hours.

I’ve gotten a lead today on some part-time work which might get us by in the meantime. Don’t have all the details just yet but its a lead, nevertheless.

Also had lunch with a gentleman who might need my skills for a long-term project. The opportunity sounds quite interesting. Just need to work out the details.

From a corporate-world point of view, I’m set to do my interviews next Monday morning. We’ll see if they have what I’m looking for (and vice versa).

Looks like I’ll have something nailed down within a few weeks. Whew!

I got a couple of unexpected but welcome calls today. The first was from a recruiter who saw my resume on Monster.com. He was looking to fill a position in Northern California and asked if I’d be willing to relocate (uh, the answer is no, for those of you keeping score).

The other call was a technical phone interview with NetApp. I thought my next interaction with them would be next week, but instead I answered technical questions from him on the spot. Considering I’ve got a ton of stuff going on right now, I think I did a decent job answering them. I expect to meet with them on one of those days next week that isn’t chaotic.

Tuesday we sell our house. Wednesday we buy our new house. Quite a week ahead. Expect light blogging until things get settled.

Just a reminder that I’ll be teaching a class on the Asterisk PBX system Saturday morning in Apex.

Details can be found on the TriLUG website. Directions to the Global Knowledge building are here.

There’s only seats for 35-40 people, so get there early!