Hehe. . .don't mess with me.

Most Comprehensive X-Men Personality Quiz 2.0 created with QuizFarm.com

You scored as Colossus Colossus is the strongest X-Man physically. His love for his family and his sister Illiana make him strong. Although he can be prone to fits of rage, he has a big heart under that organic steel skin. Powers: Can change his skin into organic steel making him nearly invunerable and exponentially increasing his strength Colossus 80% Storm 70% Beast 70% Cyclops 60% Gambit 60% Emma Frost 60% Rogue 60% Wolverine 60% Jean Grey 50% Nightcrawler 50% Iceman 40%

I have had it!

I think I have now been pushed about as far as I will allow. It is time to get out the power buffer and get to work on my resume. I will have to reconcile any guilty feelings I may have leaving my company but at the very first good opportunity I will be moving on. "Would you like fries with that?"

Merry Fucking Christmas

I just got up this morning to finish up my Christmas shopping. Honestly. I had nothing else in mind for today than to enjoy my "holiday". I made the mistake of looking at my computer. Either something serious has occurred in the land of SQL or some complete dumb ass made a concious choice to push a promotion that totally screwed 6 environments and affects 3 clients. I have just spent the last 2 hours on the phone with various work folk alerting them to the issue and will probably end up spending part of my vacation doing work. Needless to say at this point I am pissed off. I cannot say that I am burning out at this point. I think burnt up will suffice. I hope the rest of you can enjoy your holiday. Mine I think is pretty much fucked.

Perhaps I am not as big of a potty mouth as I had thought.

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Who knew??

31

Looking for payday loans?

Seriously, is it Friday yet??

This has been a hell of a week so far. I have been busting my butt on work stuff. At this point I think I am spending roughly 80% of my waking hours working. That did not seem bad originally until H pointed out that the raise I got a couple months ago worked out to about 12 cents an hour on a 40 hour week. Seeing as I am salaried and I have been putting in 80+ hour weeks that pretty much translates to: Jerry is getting hosed. Patience and time are my allies right now. I just have to hang on for a while longer and hope and pray I can market myself successfully later. I need a break. A long one.

. . . and heeeeeeeeeerre's H!!!!

You Should Be a Politician

Confident, assertive, and dedicated - you know what you want in life and how to get it. Stubborn and opinionated, you can stand your ground... even if it's unpopular. And while you have strong views, you never overwhelm people with your opinions. A true charmer, you subtly influence people into seeing things your way. You do best when you: - Work according to your own rules - Can change the world with what you do You would also be a good lawyer or talk show host.

What Should You Be When You Grow Up?

Hahaha, this cant be true.

You Should Be a Social Worker

You are deeply caring and empathetic. You are able to take on other people's problems as if they were your own. Sensitive and intuitive, you understand human emotions well. Helping others gives you the most joy in life. You feel like it's your purpose in life. You do best when you: - Have a lot of responsibility - Greatly impact someone's life with your work You would also be a good philanthropist or stay at home parent.

What Should You Be When You Grow Up?

Gobble gobble!

Another turkey day has passed and with it (aside from the poor turkey) another cold. I am finally feeling sorta human after spending most of my vacation in bed or on the couch. I spent entirely too much time working during my time off. That would include ANY time I spent working. Of course you can do that even when you are sick. . . if you are sitting on the couch. . .
We tried to enjoy ourselves this holiday. As much as you can when you are trying repeatedly to hack up a lung. We spent several hours at my in-laws on thursday and did the traditional dinner. Some of H's family were in town and then some we just don't get the chance to see very often. Saturday J & M and of course Mrs. B came over for a holiday meal. I will admit that I pushed for it to be at my house since I am practically chained to my laptop. I think it went pretty well. Mom got here around 8am and she and I started getting the turkey ready. We ran to the store and barely got back in time for J & M to arrive. We had a great meal and it was good to see J & M again. I don't get to see/talk with them nearly enough since they moved. H & I had to pass on their offer to go up to the Bone for drinks etc. that evening. Once our drugs wore off we were back to coughing like crazy. We ended up vegging on the couch and being as lazy as possible on Sunday. H is still coughing a lot but I think we are both nearly healthy again. I can't wait. I just left the house for the 2nd time in a week today to go to work. I have been cooped up for so long I am almost looking forward to Christmas shopping. That alone speaks volumes. Anyway, I hope everyone is well and has a happy, safe, and healthy holiday season.

Ugh. . .

So I had thought I had kicked the cold. It turns out it was just lying in wait like black ice on a Minnesota freeway. I had what I thought was another allergy attack yesterday. Machine gun sneezing and just feeling all over crappy was the theme of the day. Today is much worse. I have no energy left. I have been trying to sleep or lie on the couch all day. That did not work either. I have a client going live tomorrow at work so of course something work related had to happen. I have been working pretty much all weekend anyway trying to get this stuff ready. I thought I had made it. I was wrong. Again. (You see how often this happens?) Anyway, some asshat in charge of this project thought it would be a good idea to run the daily interfaces for this client when there is absolutely no support staff available. I have managed to run 2 out of 5 programs after debugging them. Keep in mind, I was never given a chance to actually test this stuff. The programs that needed to be in place for me to run my automation were not available until either Thursday or Friday. Now I sit here feeling like microwaved shit and trying to communicate with coworkers via email to get this stuff done. This is the weekend. Nobody is around. I don't see this ending very well and right now I just don't fucking care.

Tis the season to get sick. . . wait what?

It is once again that time of year. Thoughts of turkey dinner, mashed potatoes, and stuffing. Family gatherings and lazy days. Not to mention all the craziness of shopping for Christmas. This time of year also tends to bring sickness. I had been hoping that this year I would avoid the plague since I am not dealing directly with the public on a daily basis. I was wrong. H brought home something this past week that has knocked me out. My energy levels are very low and what little I can do wears me out quickly. I have been working from home for the past few days in an attempt to recover more quickly. I think I am almost there. I really hope so because I have a backlog of stuff to finish around the house in preparation for the cold weather. I still have to put plastic on 9 windows just for a start. I have also been trying to build a "loft" in my garage so I can improve on my storage and also so I can access the furnace mounted on my ceiling. I have made pretty good progress considering I have been ill. I have tried to put an hour or two a night in on the project and am hoping the framing and flooring will be done by late sunday. I am also looking forward to the guys coming over again this saturday to play music again. We are sucking less every week. Pretty soon we might even be good enough to be heard by the general public. Well soon enough anyway.

Work is still crazy as hell but I feel like I am getting a better handle on stuff. I have two new people lined up to start in my department. Now I not only have to do all the work but I also have to train people in. What fun!!! This should eventually make it possible for me to have somewhat of a social life again and I am really looking forward to that.

Feeling cool again

So last weekend I got to hook up with some good friends that I have not seen in a while and play some music. Granted we are not an all star band by any means. Jim just bought his first electric guitar and is still figuring out the intricacies of electric vs. acoustic and Chris and myself just really have not been playing much for the last few years. I have to say I had a blast. My fingers hurt like all sorts of swear words because they are as soft as a milk maids but that will change in time. I really have missed playing music and have been looking for an excuse to get a hobby that did not involve working on my house. I guess this is what I have been looking for because I cannot stop thinking about it. I have been playing both my bass and my classical guitar this week and I think I am going to restring my steel string and break out my electric as well. I guess I am a bit obsessive/compulsive but it is a nice break from working on the computer all the time. Before I started programming I had WoW, World of Warcraft for all you non techie folks. I could log in and kill people and waste all sorts of time on meaningless pixels. Now that I spend my days on the computer I really have no desire to do this even though killing people from Uzbekistan (sp?) with poor english skills is entertaining as hell. I have even started looking on ebay for a new bass. Surprisingly they are about 1/3 the price there as they are in the store. The guys are coming over to my house this weekend if all goes as planned and hopefully we will get at least one song down. Ya gotta start somewhere after all.

The end of the road is here

Tonight H and I did some painting in the master bedroom. We got a ton done. This is the last room to be painted to complete the top two floors of the house. As soon as this room is done the painting supplies will be put away for at least 6 months. I am hoping much longer. There are many other projects that I am planning in the near future and I do not know when I will get any of them done. Thankfully painting is not among them at the moment. I consider this my "mini retirement" from the brush. I have made a part time career out of this activity since December of '02 and I will not miss it at all. Sayonara Mr. Brush. May you burn in Hell.

MY SERVER IS UP!!!!!!

After basically the most stressful week of my entire life, today I was able to get my server back up. We had to replace the motherboard and I cannot believe the replacement price for a motherboard for a 7 year old server (actually I am not sure how old this thing is but it uses 4 - 700 mhz pentium III xeon processors if that means anything to you). Regardless the sucker is back up and running smoothly. I have caught up and actually advanced to beyond where I was last friday. Now I just have to figure out how to migrate this server to a newer more reliable server. That makes me wish I had spent more time playing with Linux server setups. Anyway, things are definitely better for the moment. Perhaps I wont hit 90 hours this week after all.

AAAAAAAARGH!!!!

Today will officially go down in history as "Black Monday". I finally thought that I was starting to make some headway at work and out of nowhere one of my servers blows up. I could type for hours telling you in how many different ways this has screwed me but we will leave it at this will probably set me back about 6 days at least. That is just to get back to where I was as of friday. Stress is building and my head is pounding. I am beyond pissed and I really just want to break shit. I know it won't help but it sure would feel good. Enough whining. . . back to work.

My just desserts

So, almost two years ago now I decided to take a chance and get into a "career job". For the most part this has been a really good choice for me. I have learned a lot and I have increased my confidence in my programming skills quite a bit. At the moment I am just plain disgusted. I know that this job will give me the skills and the opportunities to move on to bigger an better things and it is very hard for me to wait until that time is right. I really don't know where I am going with this other than to say that I am really sick and tired of people. Stupid people who's entire existance seems to be to make my life harder. I have to deal with these folks on a daily basis and it is really putting me in a foul mood. My company doesn't seem to realize that everyone has a limit. They are pushing me towards mine very quickly. They continue to load more and more work on me and even working 50 - 60 hour weeks I cannot do more than just tread water. Even when things start going smoothly I end up having to clean up messes created by others. I feel put upon and abused. I feel like I am lying at the bottom of the hill that shit rolls down and it is piling up on me. One of my co-workers who used to be my boss is quite possibly the most annoying person I have ever worked with. Generally he is a nice guy yet he has this ability to take even the most minor issue, escalate it or confuse it with something of more importance and pass it along to me. This happens at least four times a day and I just want to rip my hair out. My all time favorite example is once when working on a project (actually thrown into a project) he kept sending out emails to our VP saying that we had everything we needed to do the work. The truth was all we had was a poorly filled out questionnaire that basically held no value for me other than to use as tinder. My breaking point hit when I recieved an email that he had sent out to several people in our office including my VP saying "We have everything we need. Now we just have to get it." Wow. That is soooo fucking profound. It pretty much summed up to everyone involved that this man actually has not a single clue as to what he is doing. Yet he still remained my boss for at least another month. Now he is in charge of gathering information for me so I can concentrate on programming. I don't think there is a single email that crosses his desk that he does not forward to me asking what I need. This includes emails that I am also included on. *mad laughter commences*

Another issue I have been having lately is that I feel a bit like a prisoner. I miss seeing my friends. I miss being able to go to the bar for dinner and a drink. I miss having any freedom whatsoever. It seems that if I leave my house to do anything other than go to the office it has to be commando mission and must be completed as soon as possible so I can be home in case I am needed for work. On call 24/7. Right now life pretty much sucks. /end rant.

I would never have guessed this one.

Your results:
You are Wash (Ship Pilot)

Wash (Ship Pilot) 80% Jayne Cobb (Mercenary) 70% Malcolm Reynolds (Captain) 65% Zoe Washburne (Second-in-command) 60% Alliance 60% Kaylee Frye (Ship Mechanic) 50% Dr. Simon Tam (Ship Medic) 45% River (Stowaway) 40% Derrial Book (Shepherd) 40% Inara Serra (Companion) 25% A Reaver (Cannibal) 20%

You are a pilot with a good if not silly sense of humor. You take pride in your collection of toys. You love your significant other.

Click here to take the Serenity Personality Quiz

The "Decklet" completed

I have been meaning to post this but work has been crazy to say the least. The decklet is done and I am now on to work on inside projects. Well. . . at least inside the garage. We will see. I have enough painting to keep me occupied for a while but I do have some organizational issues going on in the garage. I guess I had better make up my mind. Oh, and I know I said I was going to post a picture of my new fence but surprisingly chain link fences dont really show up well in photos. At least mine doesn't.

Dammit!!!!!

I just found out that Robert Jordan has left our ranks. I know he has been ill for quite some time but I was hoping he would finish out his epic series "The Wheel of Time" before he ran out of time. This is the series that really hooked me on fantasy novels. At least the first five or so books. I stopped reading them around book nine because I just couldn't take waiting for two years between publications to find out what was happening only to blow throught the newest book and have to wait again. This series holds a lot of memories for me. I introduced Jim to these books and when he finished the first three books and realized it was not a trilogy he spent years biding his time to get back at me for getting him into it. He finally got me back by loaning me George R.R. Martins "A SONG OF ICE AND FIRE". Anyway, I hope he is at peace now and with any luck he will run into Kurt Vonnegut and they can discuss the benefits of writing short concise stories. They better not farm off the remainder of his work to some half-wit relative to finish. . . that would just be an insult.

The "Decklet" in progress

Now that we have a fence we decided that instead of waiting until next spring to build our deck we would put up temporary stairs. So the "Decklet" was born. Granted, it is nothing really special but the wife and I did the work on this all by ourselves. This way we can let the dogs out to play or go to the bathroom. This is especially handy since winter is coming up. It really sucks to have to stand out in the cold waiting for Bandit to find her place to go. Next summer hopefully will be the "Coming of Deck". If everything works out as I would like we will be having a BBQ on the 4th of July. We watched fireworks from 5 different cities this past year and that was from ground level. I am as excited as a teenager with a six-pack.

It's fixed I tell ya!

Okay, so I did read the bible cover to cover years ago. Since then I have read hundreds of things and plain just tried to wipe out my brain cells with beer. I will admit I guessed on a lot of the questions here but I in no way expected to do this well. Perhaps I should get ordained, then I could skip out on taxes like all those pro atheletes.

You know the Bible 79%!

 

Wow! You are truly a student of the Bible! Some of the questions were difficult, but they didn't slow you down! You know the books, the characters, the events . . . Very impressive!

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Stress is my life

So my friend and mentor is leaving the company I work for and persuing possibly better opportunities. I won't say that this is a bad thing because he has not been happy in his job for a while now. For me however, it is not great. I know I will not be losing a friend but I will definitely be seeing less of him. I am facing the prospect of having to prove myself not only to my bosses but also to myself. This is slightly scary for me so in my typical style I have been stressing out and being a cranky bastard. I really do wish Sean the best at his new job but his presence will certainly be missed. Not only because as of this coming Saturday I will be the only person in my department and will be on call 24/7 for the forseeable future but because he is one hell of a good programmer and it's always fun working with him. Good luck Sean! I hope I do as well as you have. Now bring on the shitstorm cuz I am gonna go down fighting!

Time to go back to school.

I know I am getting older but I had no idea that I was getting that forgetful. At least I beat my Bro for once.

You are 73% Knowledgable regarding US State Capitals!

 

Nice Job! Still, you do have some room for improvement. Keep up the good work. Be sure to try this again!

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Really??

Your results:
You are Green Lantern

Green Lantern 90% Spider-Man 80% Iron Man 80% Robin 50% Hulk 50% The Flash 50% Catwoman 45% Superman 40% Batman 40% Supergirl 40% Wonder Woman 40%

Hot-headed. You have strong will power and a good imagination.

Click here to take the Superhero Personality Test

Okay, cooler than Psychos but Richard Dreyfus???

http://www.myheritage.com

I admit it, this one kind of peaked my interest. I got some pretty cool ones out of it but also some fairly weird ones. Richard Dreyfus? Jim Henson?? LOL

Silly yes, but I couldn't resist

My pirate name is:

Iron Jack Roberts

A pirate's life isn't easy; it takes a tough person. That's okay with you, though, since you a tough person. Two things complete your pirate persona: style and swagger. Maybe a little too much swagger sometimes -- but who really cares? Arr!

Get your own pirate name from piratequiz.com.
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Not lazy just busy

I know, I am slacking. I said at the inception of this blog that I would try to keep it up. This spring and summer has been quite the ride. To begin with I finally got up enough courage and exhaustion to cut back to one job. This was probably a good thing. I have been putting in a ton of hours just at the one. We have been going like gangbusters to keep up. On top of that, my colleague and mentor Sean is now out on paternity leave.
<--Insert gratuitous baby photo-->

I have been keeping busy on the home front as well. On March 17th we added another puppy into our midst. Pepper is a high energy attention whore who keeps us from sitting still for long.
<--Insert another gratuitous baby photo-->

After many years of feeling guilty for ripping down her old (and extremely dangerous) deck, I was finally able to participate in building Mom B a new one. Between Jas hitting his head on the joists and me falling into footings it was fairly comical yet we still managed to do a pretty good job. The inspector had issues with only a few things and we are still working on getting them fixed. I think we have addressed most of the problems so far so the end is in sight. The best part however is that Mom is happy with it. Also it was good practice for me to eventually build my own.

We also made the trip down to Oklahoma this summer to help Jas and Michele move. It was nice to get away for a few days. Next time though I am not moving anything. Overall I think the move went pretty well.

The next highlight of our summer was the addition of a fence to our backyard. After several weeks of planning and acquiring permits and basic putzing around, we finally got started on the project. Shortly after beginning, the weather turned foul and rainy. This delayed our construction a little but as of last Saturday we are pretty much done. We did have to send a gate back to be re sized but the hole it left in its absence was patched temporarily and Bandit and Pepper have been able to run free for a bit each night (photos coming soon). We have also planted a few trees to eventually shade our back yard. We had two maples donated from Mom B and three oaks from Mom and Dad G. Now we get to start plotting and planning our landscaping. The deck will be waiting until next spring due to the unexpected cost of the fence. As of now we are debating building a set of temporary stairs to hold us over in the meantime.

Now as we are nearing fall I am regretting not getting out on the motorcycle a bit more but I am happy with all that we did get done. Work on the inside of the house will swing back into high gear once the weather turns and all the festivals and other extra curricular activities are done. With that said I will get back to slacking. I hope everyone is well and I also hope to see you all soon. Carry on.

Keep on keepin' on

Life has started to fall into a very steady pattern lately. This is not necessarily a bad thing. I work, come home, work on the house, make dinner, work on the house some more, and go to bed. Except on the weekends. Friday I work pretty much from 7:30 a.m. until around 3:00 a.m. Saturday morning. I go home, sleep for a few hours and then work for another 10 or so. Sunday is pretty much recovery day. I typically end up getting out of bed between 1 and 3 in the afternoon and try to be lazy for the rest of the day because I know it is all going to start again on Monday. The good news, and main reason for this post is that we have finally rented our townhouse. Basically it is a contract for deed type rental. I get to spend a year playing land lord and hopefully at the end of this time we will close. This being said it means that I can now consider at least cutting back on my hours at the bar. Since I had been hoping to "retire" from bartending in January I guess this isn't as great as it could be but I would like to restock the cupboards and refill the coffers before I finally feel comfortable cutting back to one job. I am highly anticipating that day. Not only will I actually have a little free time but I will also have more time to finish stuff up around the house. I am now officially one room away from being done painting my main level and 3 rooms away from being done painting the top 2 floors. There are so many things I would like to do this summer on the outside of the house or in the yard, yet I really want to finish this painting up first. I figure I have been painting for pretty much 4 years solid with only minor breaks. Anyway, that is pretty much all for the moment. If all goes as normal I will probably get another post in here in a month or so. I will try to shoot for something sooner though.

Tagged!

Here I am minding my own business and out of the blue I get tagged. Now I actually have to engage my mental faculties and try to come up with 5 odd things about myself. Please bear with me because I don't know that I am really that odd.

1. I have been described as an "Undercover geek" because I really like fantasy/science fiction, I play mmorpg video games, I work as a computer programmer, and I don't fit the typical visual type.

2. I am very well liked. Most people would assume that is because I am a really nice guy. Now this can be true depending on the situation, however I see myself as being ornery, cantankerous, and extremely anal. Also I find that I have a very short amount of patience for anything or anyone I consider to be ignorant and/or tiresome.

3. I have a great memory for peoples faces and what they drink (legacy of too many years as a bartender) yet for the life of me have the hardest damn time remembering names.

4. I have an aptitude for figuring out how things work and will often take on extremely daunting projects around the house personally rather than pay someone to do them.

5. I have a great aversion to calling people on the phone. It does not scare me, I just don't like doing it.

Now seeing as this was passed my way by my lovely SIL I guess I will have to pass it along as well. Sorry Nik but here you go

Not much going on. . .

Life has been very calm lately. I really kind of like that. Work on the house continues at a slower pace than I would like but I only have so much free time to put into it. I have totally gutted my 1/2 bath and will hopefully be putting down tile in the next week. My goal is to have the room reassembled within the next 2 weeks. The cold outside has not helped me with my ambitions since I have not really had the drive to go get the supplies I need for my projects. I am still working way more than I would like and will continue to do so until my townhouse sells. Even though I love paying the mortgage on 2 houses simultaneously I will be more than content to only have 1. Sorry this was not an earth shattering proclamation after such a long hiatus but then I really have nothing profound to share at the moment. Carry on all, the warm weather is coming.